The Ouija Board
by A Hidden Path
Summary: Tai and Davis drag the boys to a local cemetery to invoke the spirits on Halloween night. Strange things start happening afterwards, especially to Izzy. When the boys finally own up to their seance, Amy is aghast to learn that they broke all of the rules a Ouija board puts in place to keep spirits in their own world... A four chapter humor/horror story.
1. The Seance

**Author's Notes:**

Hey all! Thanks for checking out my story :D This is a silly tale about the Halloween shenanigans of drunk college students and Izzy's occult skepticism. It's set in the future of my Digimon fanfic, _Four Years,_ an AU set in an American college. Thus, I use their dub names, and 'Izzy' is a nickname for 'Isaac' rather than 'Izumi.' This doesn't come up 99% of the time, but it's mentioned in this segment.

I tried to give some quick background info in _Ouija_ for readers who haven't read _Four Years_ , so the first scene is a touch exposition heavy. But hang in there, because the seance is pretty great XD _Four Years_ has two OCs, Amy and Hana, and they are in this story. Also, for those of you who haven't reached college age yet, Halloween is a drinking holiday for young adults, and that's why people are drunk and partying XD

This is a three part comedy/horror story. It will probably run about 15,000 words in length. I'm posting the next chapter next weekend and the final chapter on Halloween. I hope you'll enjoy it :D Happy Halloween!

 **The Ouija Board**

 _Part 1: The Seance_

Izzy staggered off the campus courtesy shuttle, gripping the handrail tightly. Despite his attempts to pace his imbibing, the night of drinking at Halloween parties had taken its toll. There was a slight disconnect between what he wanted his legs to do and what they actually did.

Cold air blew around him, a relief after being crammed in a packed shuttle. He breathed in deeply, tasting the crisp air of autumn. It smelled of leaves and alcohol, although the latter scent might have been rising from him. He moved off of the sidewalk and onto the grass, making room for other passengers to disembark. His friends gathered around him, some chatting, some staring sleepily into the darkness.

Something struck his back, and Izzy stumbled forward. "Ow! Izzy, what're ya doing just standing there?" Davis seized his arm for balance, nearly pulling him down.

"Hey," Tai called, stepping down the shuttle stairs. "Don't you think you're forgetting something, Davis?" Izzy and Davis turned to see Tai half-carry Ken out of the shuttle and onto the sidewalk. Davis yelped and draped Ken's arm over his shoulders.

"You feeling any better, man?" Davis asked. Ken groaned.

"I _told_ you I didn't want to drink." He swallowed hard and pinched his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry, Ken. Come on, we're almost there. TK, little help?"

TK stepped off of the shuttle, followed by Kari. Shaking his head, he wound Ken's free arm over his shoulders. "You shouldn't pressure people to drink if they don't want to, Davis," he said.

"Just carry him," Davis snapped.

Kari sighed and turned to her brother. "We're heading back to our dorms. See you later!"

"Do you want me to walk you back?" Tai asked.

"I didn't drink, Tai," she said with a grin. "If anyone needs an escort, it's _you_."

"Fine, fine. Good night," Tai replied. He watched them leave with a faint smile. "Ah, their first Halloween on a campus. And to think, Kari was dressing up as a kitty princess just a few years ago…. All of us are okay to walk home, right?"

He peered into the assembled group, checking everyone's faces. Izzy was surrounded by his house mates: Sora, Matt, Joe, Mimi, Amy, and Hana.

"Are you alright, Hana?" Sora asked. The tiny brunette scoffed and pirouetted, but her foot wobbled beneath her. Sora caught her when she tripped, and Tai sighed and knelt to the ground.

"Climb on, Han," he said, indicating his back.

"I'm _fine_ ," she grumbled, but Tai stared at her with narrowed eyes until she wrapped her arms around his neck. He rose in an easy motion and hooked his elbows beneath her knees. Izzy acknowledged a begrudging admiration for his alcohol tolerance.

"The rest of you are on your own," Tai said. "I'm out of arms." He started walking towards the house that Mimi's father rented to them, and the others trailed behind.

Amy fell into stride with Izzy, yawning enormously. "Are you alright?" Izzy asked.

"Just sleepy." She tipped her head back to observe the night sky. "The moon is swirling."

Although he knew that the moon was behaving as usual, Izzy followed her glance. She was right; it did seem to move a little, or at least vibrate. "We drank too much," he sighed.

"And it was fuuuuuun!" Amy sang.

"I'm glad." Izzy held her arm, preventing her from wandering off the sidewalk.

Their group trudged along wearily, moving like a pack of slugs. They passed rows of old houses, mostly rented to groups of college students. The homes were probably charming once upon a time, but decades of harsh use had rendered the suburb shabby and worn. White fences had faded to gray, and some of the posts were broken, or missing entirely. Halloween parties still raged on many of the lawns, and they would continue into dawn.

After a few minutes, their house came into view. It was a white structure in the Victorian style, cheerful during the day, but imposing at night. Mimi stepped to the front of the group and gestured to Joe, who pulled his keys from his pocket. He passed them to Mimi, and she climbed the porch stairs and worked the lock on the front door.

"Oof," Tai groaned. "Stairs. Han, can you climb them on your own?"

Hana grumbled, but when Tai lowered himself, she slid off his back. She lurched up the stairs like a shambling zombie, and the others followed.

As they filed into the foyer, Tai poked Izzy's shoulder and leaned close. "Come back down after you get Amy settled."

"Why?" Izzy whispered back, but Tai was already facing the opposite direction, hauling Hana towards her bedroom. Izzy scowled at the athlete's back. He was ready to get out of his costume and fall into bed, but it seemed that Tai had something else in mind.

Izzy had no clue what Tai was thinking, but experience suggested that it wouldn't bode well for him. He was neither drunk enough to play along with Tai's schemes, nor sober enough to argue his way out. Sighing, he ushered Amy up the stairs and steeled himself for whatever would follow.

 **A Little Later**

By the time he helped Amy to bed, Matt and Tai were waiting in the foyer. "What took you?" Tai whispered. "Come on. We have to go; I think Hana knows that I'm up to something."

Izzy cocked a single eyebrow. "Prepping a drunk girl for bed is no small task."

Tai shrugged and shooed them towards the front door. "Whatever. Let's get moving."

"Where are the others?" Izzy asked.

"TK and Davis are meeting us there. Apparently Ken passed out the second he came home, and Joe did, too, so it's just the five of us."

Izzy's shoulders bunched up beneath his cloak. "And why have you only invited males to this... whatever it is?"

Tai opened the front door and ushered them back into the night. Sighing, Izzy drew his costume's cloak around himself to block out the chill. His mind went to Amy, warm and sleeping peacefully in their bed. What the hell was he doing out here, following Tai into a nascent fiasco?

Tai switched on the electronic lantern in his hand and held it aloft beneath his chin. It lit his face into a grotesque pattern of shade and light that rose, disembodied, from the darkness. "I didn't invite the girls because I don't want to give them nightmares."

The muscles in Izzy's face shifted into a deadpan expression. Matt's snort floated behind him from somewhere in the dark. "Please," the blond said. "You didn't tell the girls because Hana can't back down from a challenge, even though she's terrified of the occult."

Tai sighed and lowered the lantern, illuminating the sidewalk underfoot. Izzy stared at the halo of light, using it to maintain his footing. Alcohol still sang in his system, complicating the everyday business of walking. "I'd love to see her freak out, but I'm afraid she'd literally piss herself. We'll bring her another time, when she isn't drunk and it isn't Halloween."

Scowling, Izzy kicked aside a discarded beer can. "Bring her where, exactly? To do what?"

He didn't need the lantern's light to visualize Tai's responding grin. "To the local graveyard. To hold a seance."

Izzy stopped so suddenly that Matt walked into his back, nearly toppling them both over. Izzy turned, swayed, and was forced to carefully consider the movements of his feet.

Tai clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Graveyard's this way, man."

"I'm aware," Izzy said through gritted teeth. "Our home is in _this_ direction, and that is where I'm going."

Tanned fingers curled around his shoulder, applying pressure. "C'mon. It'll be fun! You have all day tomorrow to sleep."

If Izzy's eyes rolled any further back, he'd have a view of his retinas. "Tomorrow is a Wednesday, Tai."

"No one goes to classes the day after Halloween."

Sensing that engaging Tai would get him no where, Izzy turned to Matt. "Surely _you're_ not interested in occult nonsense."

Matt shrugged. "Never tried it. Sounds interesting."

Somehow, Izzy managed to simultaneously wince and communicate an air of unimpressed disbelief. "And by what means are you contacting the dead?"

Matt handed him a slim package, and Tai held his lantern over it. It was roughly the size and shape of a board game box, and the lid was covered with stars, a sun, and a crescent moon. Izzy squinted to read the text in the dim light.

"A ouija board?" He swallowed the urge to groan.

Tai clapped him on the back, nearly knocking his nose into the box. "Yep! They say it's the best way to talk to ghosts and stuff."

Although he hesitated to dignify Tai's suggestion with a question, Izzy couldn't resist. "'And stuff?' What else would you expect to contact?"

Tai stooped forward and held his arms out in front of him, like a raptor stalking prey. "Demons. Ghouls. Maybe even the devil."

Matt shifted uncomfortably beside him, but Izzy was unimpressed. "To clarify, you're planning to sit in a graveyard with a plastic board and a pointer and wait for dead people to speak through it."

"Yep," Tai said, popping the 'p'. "C'mon. Don't you believe there's something beyond our world out there, Izzy?"

Izzy flicked his glance back to the box. "If there _is_ a gateway to another world, then I doubt that it's mass produced by Hasbro."

Matt laughed and leaned over his shoulder for a look at the box. "Oh, look. Ages eight and up..."

"Shut up," Tai sighed. "Don't you guys know anything about ouija boards? They've literally driven people crazy."

"That's merely a testament to the powers of fear and hysteria on suggestible minds," Izzy said tartly. "Nothing more."

Still grinning, Tai poked him in the chest. "Keep talking, Izzy. I can't wait to say 'I told you so.'"

Izzy snorted, then remained silent for the rest of the walk, ignoring Tai's chattering and Matt's occasional input. It was well past midnight, technically no longer Halloween. Yet people in costumes still trailed along the sidewalk, most drunk, loud, and disheveled. Izzy's mind drifted back to his bed and its occupant, then to a problem in the code he was working on.

He didn't realize that they had arrived until Davis's voice ripped through the darkness. "Over here! What took you guys so long!"

Tai raised a hand in acknowledgment. "Don't yell. You'll scare off the ghosts." Izzy sighed and fell into line behind Matt, picking a trail single file through tombstones, squinting for bearings in the faint light of the lantern.

The graveyard was situated in a clearing surrounded by trees. Their bare branches reached towards the sky and trembled in the slight breeze, like supplicants appealing to the heavens. Moonlight shone between the them, creating dark silhouettes that dappled the gravestones. Izzy could see the inscriptions, inky slots in aged stone, but could not decipher them.

The graves might have been in orderly rows once, but it seemed like the space had filled in over the years. The markers were crowded and disarrayed, choking the brown grass in between. Only the larger monuments provided enough open space for them to sit in a group. Tai led them towards one, a dark shape towering in the distance. When they reached it, Izzy observed the stone figure towering over him. Its head drooped beneath a veil that fell to the ground in a puddle of carved folds. TK and Davis were lighting votive candles at its bare feet.

"Why here?" Matt asked. Izzy wasn't sure, but he thought the words contained a trace of hesitance.

Davis grinned at them over his shoulder. "It's creepy, yeah? Who puts something like this over a family grave?"

Matt stared at the inscription, just barely legible in the candlelight. Izzy flinched when he suddenly jolted backwards. "Davis, there are _kids_ buried here. Don't you think this is kind of gauche?"

TK's lighter blew out as he turned towards his brother, checking the dates. An uncommonly serious expression passed his face, but it was there and gone in a moment. "Maybe they have something to say. Maybe they're bored."

"Don't turn this into a story," Matt sighed. "It's a real person's grave."

Tai clapped Matt on the back. "Everyone's here, Matt. Can't back out now!"

Matt stared at the flickering candles for a long moment, then slid the ouija board from under his arm. "Do you even know how to use it?"

"How hard can it be?" Tai asked. He grabbed the board and tore off the shrink wrap. Matt scowled and bent to pick up the plastic, but Tai was too busy unfolding the board to notice.

"I've seen these in movies," Davis said, kneeling beside Tai. "You touch the heart thing, and the ghost moves it over the board."

 _I very much doubt it._ Izzy allowed himself a tiny smile as he sat on the earth beside Matt. The cold instantly seeped through his pants, and he shuddered.

"If Sora asks about the grass stains on the pants she made me, you're explaining," Matt grumbled. Tai ignored him in favor of Davis, who was shoving his hands into the box.

"Here's the heart!" he cried, holding it up. It was white and plastic, with a round window near the tip. Izzy fought the urge to shake his head. The pointer was about as supernatural as a coaster.

"Here are the instructions." TK extracted a piece of paper from the box and held it near the lantern. "Okay... It says that a lady and a gentleman should sit knee-to-knee and place the board over their knees." He lowered the paper and grinned. "I think we're short a lady."

"We're low on gentlemen, too," Matt pointed out. Tai snorted.

"You're the closest thing we have to a lady, Matt. I guess it's you and me."

"What?" Davis cried. "I want to try it!"

Matt scooched over on the grass, making room for Davis. "Be my guest. I'd rather watch."

"Yes!" Davis abandoned his perch by the statue and sat opposite Tai. When they were in position, TK lowered the board over their legs and gave Tai the pointer.

Izzy had never seen a ouija board before, so he inched forward for a good look. It folded open like a game board, with a horizontal crease down the center. Its face was brown with black writing. The top left corner contained an illustration of the sun, overlaid with the word 'Yes.' A crescent moon decorated the right, frowning at 'No.' The alphabet was divided into two rows beneath this, slightly curved. Below that, numbers ran sequentially from 1 to 9, followed by 0. For reasons unknown to him, the word 'goodbye' embellished the bottom of the board.

"It says that both of you should lightly touch the planchette- I guess that's the pointer?- on the curved sections," TK continued. "Make a few passes around the board to warm it up."

 _Warm it up? For what?_ Izzy pulled his cloak closer and clenched his hands inside of it. His body heat and patience were rapidly deteriorating.

Tai and Davis pushed the planchette around the board a few times as TK continued to read. "It says that only one of the players should ask questions." He allowed himself a tiny smile. "I guess the spirits get confused."

"I'll do it," Tai said. "TK, you watch the board for answers."

"Gladly. There's more, but do you want to give it a go?"

Matt's brow furrowed. "What are you supposed to open with?"

"I dunno," Davis replied. "How about... Is this thing on? Is anybody out there?"

"Sure. TK, stop laughing. Get serious, Davis." Izzy rolled his eyes as Tai lectured, making more noise than anyone else. "Okay. Are there any ghosts out there?"

"Spirits," TK whispered. "Say 'spirits'."

"Goddamit, TK. _One_ speaker. Are there any spirits out there?"

They waited, but the planchette remained on the center of the board. Izzy's attention focused, searching for signs that he knew wouldn't appear. Everything was still and silent, save for the soft drone of insects and the far-off sounds of laughter and music.

"Ask again," TK suggested at last. "Keep moving the planchette."

"Are there any spirits out there?" Tai repeated. The planchette moved in a slow arc over the board for a few seconds, then drifted to the upper left. Izzy leaned closer despite himself when it came to a halt.

The word "yes" peeked out through the circular window in the planchette. "Whoa!" Davis whispered. Izzy shook his head. They were all drunk, or at least buzzed. Davis and Tai could easily believe that they weren't moving the pointer on their own in this state. He was just beginning to appreciate the true scope of the evening's potential for idiocy.

The dim light of the lantern reflected off the golden specks in Tai's eyes. Izzy groaned quietly. The athlete was already primed and excited. "So, uh... Are you a good spirit?" he asked.

The planchette moved in a sluggish circle, spelling out gibberish. Then it snapped into action, like a cat exploding into a run from a nap. TK leaned closer and read aloud. "R-e-l-a-t-i-v-e."

Izzy glanced at Matt, the only other sensible person present. His eyes were widening as Davis frowned. "I don't get it," the freshman muttered. "Is the ghost related to someone?"

TK grinned from ear to ear, eyes gleaming silver with moonlight. "No, Davis. The ghost is saying that the concepts of good and evil are relative, which invalidates the question."

Izzy shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's a bit hasty to infer so much from a single word." But despite his protest, a sliver of confusion joined his skepticism. How could a drunken duo of Tai and Davis answer a simple question with a high concept answer? And correctly spelled, at that?

"Whatever," Tai said, staring at the board. "Let's keep going. When did you die?"

The planchette slipped towards the bottom of the board, pausing over the numbers 1,8,9, and 2. Matt and TK jerked in unison, turning towards the monument.

"What?" Davis whispered. He tried to peek over his shoulder without breaking position.

Matt licked his lips. "That's... That's the year one of the children buried here died."

"Of course it is," Izzy muttered. But he was searching his memory, trying to recall if Tai or Davis read the dates when Matt brought it up. He couldn't remember watching them read the inscription, but that was not proof that they didn't.

Suddenly, the planchette surged upward, and Davis fell forward, knocking into Tai. "Whoa! Tai, did you _feel_ that?"

Izzy's mouth thinned into a tiny line. _Now what?_ Uncertainty passed Tai's face as the pointer went immobile.

"Yeah," he said at last. "The pointer was sort of... pulling at my hand earlier. But the tug cut off."

"That's weird." TK was still grinning, enjoying the spectacle. Izzy looked away from him, exhausted by his constant enthusiasm. "Ask what's wrong."

"What's wrong?" Tai repeated. "Where did you go?" He and Davis passed the planchette over the board until it yanked itself into motion, rapidly spelling out words.

"Do not like him," TK read. "Whom?"

"Who don't you like?" Tai asked. TK hissed the grammatical correction, then fell silent as the planchette responded.

R-E-D.

Izzy glowered at Tai. He was moments away from accusing the others of setting him up for a practical joke when Tai and Davis chorused, "What does that mean?"

Matt turned to him, his expression unreadable. Before he said anything, the board helpfully specified 'R-E-D-H-E-A-D.' A host of faces whipped towards Izzy, indistinct in the darkness. Izzy frowned at the lot of them.

"I've had enough of this farce. If these spirits are going to call me out, they can at least use my name."

The planchette lurched into motion once more, spelling out S-H-U-T-U-P-I-S-A-A-C. Matt tensed, but Izzy rolled his eyes, still unimpressed.

"Shut up, Isaac?" Davis released a breath in a shaky hiss, then grinned and shrugged. "What the hell, board! I guess it doesn't work after all."

"What are you talking about?" Matt asked. "Oh, right, you might not know. That's Izzy's real name."

"Wait, seriously?" Tai demanded. Davis hissed beside him, and TK's posture slumped as he dug for the notebook in his pocket. Izzy hastened to intervene before the boy had a chance to chronicle the seance for future writing projects.

"You _know_ my name, Tai," he snapped. "We've known one another for over three years. I'd appreciate it if you'd all kindly drop this flimsy pretext for a practical joke. I would much rather be sleeping than watching you mime your way through a script."

Tai's eyes widened. "Sorry man, but I thought Izzy was your name. I'm not making this up."

Davis laughed, but the sound was a little nervous. "You really didn't know, Tai?"

Izzy slapped his palm against his face. "He's heard my name before. Even if he doesn't consciously remember, the information is there. Therefore, the planchette offering my name is hardly proof of the supernatural."

"S-sure." Davis turned to Tai and lifted an eyebrow.

"I didn't know," he whispered.

"You're spelling out words again," TK said. Davis yelped and looked down. Izzy sighed as the board told him to shut up again.

"Now you're just pouting," he said, filling his voice with sharp sarcasm.

Tai frowned down at the board. "Okay, ghost. What's your problem with Izzy? Er, Isaac?"

"Doubt," TK read. "Mock." Izzy crossed his arms beneath his cloak. He was aware that he sometimes flubbed social interactions, but he wasn't ready to admit fault for upsetting a nonexistent spirit.

Matt stiffened beside him. "We should stop," he said. "Is that what the 'goodbye' is for?"

"What?" Davis cried. "No! This is just getting interesting! Hey, ghost! If you want respect, why don't you prove that you're real?"

Suddenly, a sharp breeze bit into the night, snuffing all the candles. The host of trees moaned around them, rocking and creaking with the rush of wind. Izzy groaned quietly, cursing nature's poor timing.

"What the hell," Davis whispered. TK lifted the lantern and turned up its intensity. For a moment, the board was bright and clear. Then there was a popping sound within the device, and it shut off, plunging them into darkness.

"Shit," Tai muttered. "I can't see anything. My phone is dead; does anyone have theirs?"

"Sorry," Matt said, holding his hands out. "We should pack up and go home. This is getting too weird."

"Dammit, I forgot mine," Davis sighed. "Izzy?" He lifted a single eyebrow in response. No one could see it, but they seemed to understand that he had no interest in prolonging the seance.

"I have mine," TK said. He pulled his phone from his pocket, turned it on, and held it over the board. The planchette was moving down the row of numbers from right to left, counting down from nine.

"Huh. That's weird," Tai said.

"Maybe the ghost can't see the board?" Davis suggested. Izzy snorted as the pointer finished its circuit, landing on the 1 symbol. It lingered there for a moment, then revved back into life, swirling over the board with no apparent goal.

"It's not spelling anything," TK said.

Although he was reluctant to participate, Izzy couldn't help watching. The planchette twirled in arcs, forming a familiar shape. "It appears to be drawing the infinity symbol," Izzy offered.

"The what?" Davis looked away from the board just long enough to give Izzy a questioning glance.

"The lemniscate? It looks like a sideways eight and represents the mathematical concept of infinity."

"Er, yeah. I don't think the ten-year-old ghost knows about that," Tai said.

"He's been dead for a long time," TK pointed out. "Who knows? Maybe you can learn a lot while you haunt."

The light from TK's phone blinked out, and he gasped with surprise. "I just charged it," he mumbled. Davis muttered a surprised curse, but Izzy smiled.

 _Thank goodness._ With no light source, there was no way to read the board. "I suppose that's that," Izzy said. He winced as he stood. His legs were numb from sitting, and the sudden blood flow made them tingle painfully.

"What? No way!" Davis reached for the lighter. "We'll just light the candles again."

"With this breeze? We'll never be able to keep them lit." Matt stood and collected the ouija board's box. "We're done for the night."

"He's right," Tai sighed. He handed the board and planchette to Matt, who packed them away. "It sucks, but what can we do?"

"Aww, man! I was having fun! But it was kinda creepy, right? How it knew Izzy's name and was mad at him?" Davis elbowed Izzy and grinned. "Are you scared?"

"Ah, no." Izzy's mind was sparking with annoyance and frustration beneath a terrible headache. He didn't appreciate being dragged out in the cold just to be ridiculed by Tai and Davis. While he knew Tai enjoyed pranking his friends, this one was too insulting to his intelligence for Izzy to tolerate.

The seniors said goodbye to Davis and TK, whose dorm was in a different direction. Izzy thought feverishly while Tai chattered about the seance, trying to concoct an appropriate revenge prank. But shenanigans weren't his strong suit, and by the time they returned home, he still had nothing. _Ah, well. I suppose vengeance isn't in my nature, regardless…_

Tai paused in the foyer before clicking off the porch light. "The old house looks kinda spooky in the dark, huh?"

"Go in, Tai," Izzy replied tartly. "You're letting out the heat."

Tai tsked, but obeyed. "Please. You were scared. Admit it."

Izzy turned on the foyer light, revealing a pretty entryway. A curved staircase with a delicate railing filled most of the space. A baby grand piano hugged the curve. A door to the left housed a dining room that Mimi's father had converted to a bedroom with a bathroom. The opening to the right led to the kitchen, and the last opening to the side of the piano led to the living area and an office that was now another bedroom.

Izzy walked to the staircase and paused at the first step. "If that was your aim, then you failed. I'm simply annoyed at the waste of time. Good night."

"Izzy, I seriously wasn't pranking you," Tai called, but Izzy ignored him. All he wanted to do was remove his costume and climb into bed. He trudged up the stairs, weary from a night of partying and still just a little tipsy.

The dark hallway was silent, save for Matt's slow steps a few paces behind. Matt reached his door first, and its squeal was like thunder in the silence.

"Good night," Matt whispered. Izzy echoed the sentiment and opened his bedroom door.

A night light shaped like a ladybug provided enough illumination to navigate to the bathroom. Izzy didn't want to disturb Amy's sleep, so he relied on the low lighting to use the restroom and brush his teeth.

When he was finished, Izzy leaned over the sink and filled his cupped palms with water. He splashed his face, reached blindly for a towel, and dried off.

When he lowered the towel, his eyes locked on a pale oval reflected in his mirror. Puzzled, Izzy leaned closer. Features seemed to form before his eyes, first an indistinct mouth, then a tiny bump for a nose. Dark slits appeared in the eye area, then slowly widened, like crescent moons ripening into full orbs. They flashed when they opened, and the little mouth curved into a horrible grin.

Izzy stepped back and rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, the mirror reflected his face, white and shocked. He stared at himself for a moment, then backed out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

 _I'm still drunk_. It occurred to him that he might be seeing things because he was spooked by the seance, but he refused to acknowledge suggestibility to the occult. _I'll drink less next time_ , he told himself firmly.

With that decided, he stripped down to his undershirt and boxer briefs and approached the bed. Warmth plumed out as he lifted the covers. Amy was sleeping on her side, facing away from him. Izzy climbed in and pressed his front against her back, winding his arm around her side.

She murmured, but didn't stir. Izzy's heart rate slowed to its natural pace as her body heat seeped into him. He pushed her curtain of long brown hair aside, kissed her neck, and closed his eyes.

And slowly, the irritation from the seance and the shock from the vision in the mirror faded away.

 **Author's note:** Annnnd there's your set-up chapter! Things get really weird next time, so be sure to check back in next week! Tai might have reasons to tell Izzy "I told you so" after all…


	2. Strange Portents

**Author's note:** The relationships shown in this chapter/story are heavily explored in my fanfic _Four Years_ , the AU where this story is set. I can't encapsulate all of it here, but it helps to know that Amy goes way back with Tai, Kari, Matt, and TK, and that Izzy and Joe have been friends forever.

I'm sorry this update isn't as polished as I would like. I'm really struggling to meet the Halloween deadline. Whew!

 **Strange Portents**

Izzy awoke in total darkness. He lifted his hands to his face, but he could not see them. He scowled and squinted, but everything remained veiled.

 _Did the night light burn out?_ He tried to sit up, intending to check on the light, but his head immediately struck something hard. A curse popped out of his mouth, followed by a mental one as he recalled that Amy was trying to sleep beside him.

Head reeling from the impact, Izzy lifted his hands to examine the surface hovering above his bed. He found a smooth, cold plane inches above him. _But that makes no sense. How could my ceiling lower during the night, or my bed rise?_

He reached for Amy, needing to confirm that she was alright. His hand smacked into another barrier. The first sparks of panic formed as he explored his confines. Kicking and pounding did him no good; he was trapped in a box hardly larger than his body.

 _Think. Feel for some kind of escape._ Breathing loudly, Izzy stopped beating on the walls and forced his palms to flatten out. He ran them over the surfaces, searching for a knob or lever that could free him, starting with the area in front of his face. His fingers slid over every inch, but found nothing.

When he moved his hands to search elsewhere, a glowing spot formed in their wake. At first, it was just a speck, like the light of a firefly. It rapidly stretched to the size of a dessert plate. Izzy stared, transfixed, as rough features formed on the luminous circle, first a line for the mouth, then a nub for the nose. Crescent moon eyes ripened into full orbs in clunky stages, resembling an animation missing half of its frames.

His brain roared into action, fighting to remain a step ahead of the paralyzing effects of fear and panic. There had to be a reasonable explanation for all of this, but try as he might, he couldn't think of one. He choked, and the sound bounced back to him from the many surfaces holding him still and helpless on his back. The slit mouth twisted into a manic grin.

He screamed when a sudden impact struck the surface above him. The glowing face began to laugh, pressing the round eyes back into crescents. Another impact followed, then another, until a steady thudding beat around him, vibrating his prison and filling his head with the deep song of a drum. The soft hiss of shifting sand filled the pauses between the strikes, along with the whine of his increasingly ragged breathing. It was still perfectly dark, and the laughing phantom was all he could see.

"W-Who are you?" Izzy choked. "What's happening?" His fingers scrambled against the walls, then began to dig. He didn't feel the splinters piercing his flesh, nor the skin and nails splitting on impact.

Impossibly, the smile grew, until it cleaved the circle into two parts. "We're real, Isaac," it sang. Bile rushed up Izzy's throat, and he fought the urge to vomit. The single face spoke with two voices, twined together like separate strands of a braid. They were high and childish, male and female, cooing like a pair of manic doves. "We'll prove it to you once you're like us."

"W-What? I, I don't-" Izzy tried to demand information, but he was growing more lightheaded by the second. He stared at the grinning face with his mouth hanging open, trying to form questions, but struggling for the breath to deliver them.

"Relax. It's just like sleeping. It will be over soon." The words were delivered in a singsong tone, meant to mock rather than comfort. Izzy groaned. His heart was nearly bursting from his chest, but his vision was fading, and the face flickered in and out out sight. Despite his distress, he was losing consciousness and fighting to breathe. Each moment, his eyelids grew heavier, and his hands flopped down to his sides. An icy sensation rushed over him as the drumming filled his ears, blocking out everything else.

"Izzy? Izzy?" Phantom hands landed on his cheeks, hot as brands against his freezing skin. His lungs seized, then expanded, and he gasped as oxygen flooded in. Each eyelid seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and he struggled to lift them. Although he was too spent to identify that voice, his subconscious recognized it and pushed him towards action.

A soft haze of light registered as his lids cracked open. Something soft and warm touched his lips, gently at first, but with more force the second time. The feeling was familiar and comforting, and it gave him the strength fight against the fatigue freezing his body. He opened his eyes wide and stared up at the form bent over him.

Amy's round face blinked down at him. Her brown eyes stared anxiously into his, and her hands were cupped around his cheeks. "Are you okay?" she whispered.

Izzy was too overwhelmed to answer. Weak morning light back lit his girlfriend's body, adding a faint glow to her skin. She seemed almost as otherworldly as the apparition from his dream.

"S-sorry I woke you." She snuggled into him, rested her head on his shoulder, and wrapped an arm around his stomach. "I had a nightmare."

His mouth was parched to the point of aching, and his tongue felt unwieldy and rough. A jolt of pain wracked his throat when he spoke, and he suppressed a wince. "It's alright." In fact, he had never been more grateful for a wakeup call, but he felt too raw to say so. He tried to glance around their bedroom without being obvious about it, reassuring himself that the dream was over and all was well. The ladybug night light shone like a red star in its socket.

Amy squished herself against him, surrounding him with body heat that soon became stifling. "It was _awful._ I dreamed that you were being buried alive, and I couldn't do anything. It was like I was watching a movie. You were in a coffin, and they were piling dirt on it, shovel after shovel, and I screamed and screamed, but I couldn't hear my own voice, and I was _so scared_ -"

Izzy flinched so hard that he nearly dislodged her. His arm wound around her, holding her close, searching for comfort. Despite his better judgment, he shut his eyes and recalled his dream, replaying it in his mind. Was it possible that his dream prison was a coffin? The dimensions of the box fit that description, and the pounding sound might have been the dirt falling into place against the wood.

They shivered in sync, and Amy pulled the covers up higher. "It was just a dream," Izzy murmured. He wasn't sure if he was speaking to her or himself.

"I, I know. But I needed to see that you were okay."

Izzy was spared answering by his cell phone alarm, which began to chime. Amy sighed and released him, and he reached towards his bedside table to turn it off. "Is it really that time already? Ugh, I don't want to get up…"

"I'm afraid so," Izzy replied. Usually, getting out of bed in the morning was a challenge, but today, he was eager to slip out of his resting place and into the waking world. The normal, _rational_ world that so faultlessly obeyed the rules of physics.

Amy kissed his cheek. "Brr! It's chilly out there! I guess it _is_ November now. Do you want me to start the hot water in the shower?"

"I'll do it. Join me in a few minutes." Izzy gave a final, drawn-out sigh, then lifted the covers and stepped out of bed. His bare feet landed on a plush rug that his mother had picked out for them, then carried him into their bathroom.

He turned on the light, nudged aside the shower's glass door, and started the water. It hissed into life, and he stripped while he waited for it to heat up. Although he knew last night's vision in the mirror was an illusion brought on by alcohol and fatigue, Izzy avoided looking into the mirror.

 _Was it truly possible that Amy and I had the same dream? She makes it sound as if she watched it from a different perspective. What are the odds of that?_ He contemplated asking her for details, but he wasn't eager to dwell on the subject.

The bathroom grew warm, and Izzy placed his hand into the stream of water to check the temperature. It was hot, so he called Amy and stepped into the shower. He debated bringing up the dream until Amy entered the room and lifted her over-sized tee shirt over her head. Long brown hair cascaded from the fabric, then spilled down her back in wild disarray. She slid her thumbs beneath the band of her panties and hooked them through the leg openings, then slid the fabric down. Izzy's hand froze, holding a bar of soap motionless against his skin.

She dropped her clothes on top of his and stepped towards the shower. Izzy opened the door and closed it behind her, shutting her in with him. She smiled shakily and embraced him, folding their bodies together. Her heartbeat pounded near his ear as a result of their difference in height. It pulsed fast and hard.

"It's alright, Amy," he murmured. "I'm fine. It was just a dream."

A shaky breath slipped down his shoulder as she squeezed him harder. _I can't tell her that I had a similar dream. It would only upset her further._ "Everything is alright now. I'm perfectly well." He stroked her back, trying to soothe her stiff muscles. The tenseness decreased, but lingered.

"I know." She shifted nervously, tipping her weight from foot to foot. "I know, but… M-maybe you could prove it to me?"

Izzy's lips curved into a smile against her collarbone. "Hmm… I _suppose_ I could find a way to prove that I'm in good health."

He set about his worthy task, and soon, the dream and the lingering discomfort faded away.

 **That Evening**

Hours later, Izzy was doing math homework in his bedroom. He sat at the desk he shared with Amy, a plain surface built into the wall, spanning its entire length. His half was covered with monitors and computer equipment, while hers contained textbooks, binders, and colorful accessories.

A soft sigh interrupted his chain of thought, and he glanced towards the bed. Amy was sleeping, curled on her side, hugging his pillow against her chest. Izzy shook his head. _How am I going to pry that away from her without waking her?_

He slumped against the backrest, then stretched and checked his phone for the time. It was nearly midnight. He normally stayed up later than this, programming into the small hours of the morning, but the partying and foolishness of the previous evening had drained him. He decided to turn in early, and he was halfway to the bed when the soft trill of a piano chord echoed down the silent hallway.

Izzy turned towards the bedroom door and frowned. Amy was sleeping, so Matt was the most likely person to be at the piano, unless someone was touching keys at random. But a series of chords sounded, sweet and melodious, too beautiful to be the work of mashing fingers.

 _Perhaps he lost track of time? But I didn't hear him playing earlier…_ Izzy glanced at Amy, drooling on his pillow in her sleep, and decided to remind Matt of the late hour. He slipped out of the room and walked down the hall, trying to move silently. The old floor boards defied him, creaking beneath his feet.

Light shone at the end of the hallway, which opened into a landing overlooking the foyer. A figure stood at the railing, face pointed towards the piano on the lower level. Izzy faltered when he recognized Matt standing at the top of the stairs. The bassist turned sharply when the floor groaned with Izzy's steps. His expression was tense, but it quickly relaxed.

"Hey, Izzy," Matt said. He leaned against the railing separating the landing from the open space above the foyer. "What brings you out here?"

Izzy blinked. Why did he need to justify walking through his own home? "Er- I heard the piano. Some of our friends are sleeping, so I wanted to alert you of the late hour."

Matt's smile went stiff, then faded. "I came out here to tell Amy the same thing."

Without willing it, Izzy glanced down at the piano. No one sat at the bench, and the foyer was silent and empty. "You're implying that you didn't play those chords?"

"It wasn't me." Matt shrugged, but his darting eyes marred his attempt to appear calm.

"I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this," Izzy said. His guard rose as he sensed a possible return to yesterday's occult theme.

"Probably," Matt agreed. But his tongue darted over his lips, wetting them. "Did your recognize the song, by any chance?"

Izzy frowned down at the silent instrument. "That's hardly my strong suit."

The floor groaned, betraying Matt as he shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I'm pretty sure it was _Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair._ It's a Scottish folk song that was popular in America around the nineteenth century."

A twinge of pain assaulted his brain as the date from the tomb flashed through his memory. Izzy sighed and cradled his forehead, shutting his eyes tight. "Amy has the sheet music for that. Is your brother visiting, by any chance?"

"No," Matt sighed. "He's not _always_ the one behind mischief, you know."

"I would have guessed Tai, but I doubt he has enough patience to learn a piano song just to startle us. Although…" Izzy's dark eyes narrowed as he considered. "Tai's bedroom is steps away from the piano. He could have easy played a few chords and fled to his room when he heard the floor boards creak."

Matt opened his mouth to reply, but was drowned out by a shout that split the silence like thunder. Izzy jumped and grabbed the banister for support as Matt started running down the stairs. Izzy followed him towards the origin of the noise. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Davis leaped out of Tai's bedroom, nearly colliding with him. His eyes were wide and wild, and he staggered like a wounded animal.

Tai appeared in the doorway, laughing and shaking his head. "Yeesh, chill out, Davis! Something must have knocked over the glass."

"No one was near it!" Davis cried. "It was on the other side of the room!" He backed up, stepping into Izzy.

"Hello, Davis," Izzy sighed.

"Keep it down," Matt said, scowling. "You probably woke up everyone in the house, and our neighbors, too."

"Good! This is no time to be asleep!" Davis cried. Izzy lifted an eyebrow. The freshman's posture was stiff, but ready for action, legs spread and slightly bent. It looked like he was ready to either fight or fly through the front door, possibly without opening it first. In contrast, Tai was leaning against his bedroom's door frame, still snickering.

Izzy turned to him and tilted his head. "Dare I ask for an explanation?"

"Sure. We were watching a video of our team's last soccer match when my glass of water fell off the bedside table."

Davis's eyes bulged. "That's- That's not all that happened, Tai! It, like- It _wobbled._ Like someone tipped it." He demonstrated with his hand, flapping it back and forth in progressively wider arcs. "How did that happen?"

Tai shrugged. "Shit happens, man. Maybe it fell over because Matt clomped down the stairs too hard."

Izzy looked to Matt for an opinion, but the blond was still eying the piano. His expression was at its most remote, eyes hard and distant, mouth thinned into a perfectly level line. "Did you two hear the piano just before the glass fell over?" he asked.

Davis's reply was cut off by Sora calling to them from the living room. "Is everyone alright?" she asked, stepping into the foyer. "What was that scream?"

Amy appeared at the top of the stairs. She leaned against the railing and peeked over it, still clutching Izzy's pillow to her chest. Izzy grinned when he saw her rumpled hair. _At least she remembered to put on pants and glasses before she walked down the hall._ "S'okay?" she muttered, yawning hugely.

"Everything's fine," Izzy began, but loud footsteps from upstairs prevented further comment. He flinched instinctively when Mimi burst through the entrance to the upstairs hall, clad in a billowing pink robe.

" _Who_ is making all of that noise?!" she demanded. "I'm trying to sleep!" The boys glanced towards Davis in unison, and he stepped back towards Tai's bedroom. Izzy tried to stifle a grin. Apparently, whatever he thought might be haunting the room was preferable to an irate Mimi.

Davis held his hands out in front of him, palm forward. "S-sorry. I just- A water glass fell over by itself, and I mean… I guess it was no big deal, but…"

Sora moved towards Davis as Mimi bristled. "It's alright," she said soothingly, draping an arm around his shoulders. "Why don't you get settled in the living room, and I'll make you hot chocolate while you tell us about it."

Izzy, Matt, and Tai exchanged grins, then trailed after Sora and Davis, following them into the living room. Their living space was large and open, outfitted with a huge sectional sofa made of tough fabric designed for hard use. A fluffy area rug protected the wooden flooring. Poufs and beanbags dotted the floor for extra seating, and a pair of arm chairs waited by the built in shelves. Mimi's plant collection sprawled over the open spaces, turning the room into a small jungle.

Sora led Davis to the couch, watched him sink into the cushions, and handed him one of the throw blankets draped over the back of the sofa. "I'll be right back," she said. "Please speak up, so I can hear you." Izzy watched her move towards the kitchen, which was connected to the living room.

Amy's fingers batted his hand, and he turned to her and smiled. He led her to the opposite end of the sofa, close enough to hear Davis, but far enough that his eye rolling, if warranted, might go unnoticed. She placed the pillow against his side and cuddled into it, watching Davis with half-closed eyes. The others sat down as Joe and Hana poked their heads into the room.

"Whoa," Hana said, grinning at the lot of them. "Look, Joe! They're having a pow wow without us!"

Joe sighed and glanced around the group. "I thought I heard a scream. Is everyone alright?"

Tai made a beckoning hand motion. "C'mon. Have a seat and join the fun." Hana pranced into the room and plopped down beside Tai. Joe sighed, but sat on the pouf at Mimi's feet.

Everyone turned towards Davis, and Izzy smiled when he began to squirm. He recapped the tipping glass situation, but even with his enthusiastic hand motion demonstration, the story didn't elicit much of a reaction. Tai snorted as everyone stared at Davis, then started to laugh. One by one, the others joined in, except for Amy, who was half asleep, and Sora, who frowned as she handed Davis his mug of hot chocolate.

"Anyone would be startled if that happened," she said soothingly. Davis took a sip and grinned sheepishly up at her.

"Thanks, Sora. But you guys are probably right… If it weren't for that seance last night, I wouldn't have freaked out."

Amy twitched so hard that her shoulder dug into Izzy's, even through the pillow barrier. She sat up straight and pushed her tangled hair away from her face. "What?" she murmured, but it was drowned out by Hana's gasp.

"The _what_ last night?" she cried. "Is that what you guys- Oooooh, Tai! I _knew_ you were up to something!" Hana batted Tai's hand off of her shoulder and crossed her arms, glaring up at him. Izzy grinned as Tai edged away from his girlfriend.

Sora stood over Tai, brow furrowing with displeasure. "But why would you organize an event without inviting all of us?"

Tai dug his elbow into Davis's ribs. "I'm sorry. It was a long night, and I thought the girls would rather go to sleep."

 _Oh, my. He's going to have a hard time talking his way out of this one._ Izzy turned to Amy, intending to find her grinning over watching Tai squirm. Instead, he saw eyes downcast and cloudy with worry. He touched her hand, but she didn't react.

"What! Girls have just as much energy as boys!" Mimi cried. "How dare you leave us out!"

Hana dug her tiny fist into Tai's gut, and he jerked on impact. "Yeah! And we're not afraid, either!"

"Okay!" he croaked. "I'll invite you next time! I just thought you wouldn't like it!"

Davis grinned, clearly enjoying Tai's sudden shift in fortune. "It's too bad you girls weren't there. It got really freaky! The ghost really hated Izzy! It even knew his real name."

Izzy dropped his face into his cupped hand. "There's really no need to relate the specifics. Besides, as I said last night, the seance presented no concrete evidence of the supernatural. The ladies were merely spared a failed act designed to frighten me."

Tai and Davis rolled their eyes in unison, and watching them do it side-by-side was dizzying. "I keep telling you that we weren't pranking you, dude," Tai said. "There wasn't a script."

Izzy leaned forward to answer, but paused when Amy's hand closed around his wrist. "What exactly happened last night?" she asked. The sleepiness had vanished from her eyes, which were suddenly alert and focused.

Davis launched into his narrative, cutting Tai off at the gate. Izzy tsked and sighed periodically, particularly when Davis embellished the already ridiculous story. But interruptions would only draw out the tale, so he remained quiet and resolved to provide a more balanced opinion upon its completion.

Unfortunately, Amy cut Davis off near the end of the story. "You- You told the ghost to prove that it was real?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did." Davis grinned sheepishly. "I was kind of drunk. But that's when the candles all blew out, and the lantern blew a fuse. So TK used his phone as a flashlight, and the heart was counting down through the numbers and making a sideways eight over the alphabet."

Amy sucked in a breath and splayed a hand across her forehead. Izzy shot her a questioning glance, but her eyes were riveted to Davis. "But- But you- You _did_ say goodbye to the spirit? Right?"

"Um…" The freshman squished his face up in thought. "Like, with the board? Uh, I don't… think so?"

"We didn't," Matt said. The blond had been silent this whole time, and Izzy twitched when he spoke. "I was wondering why 'goodbye' was printed on the board. Do you know something about it?"

"Oh yeah!" Tai smiled across the room at Amy. "I should have asked you about seances beforehand. You were into that stuff in middle school, yeah?"

Izzy's eyes opened with a nearly audible snap. He turned to Amy in time to see her shrink back into the couch cushion. "Um… I've never touched a ouija board or held a seance, but I think you did some stuff… Well, wrong."

"What? It worked, though!" Davis protested. "The heart moved and everything! We could feel it tugging, right Tai?"

A twinge of color darkened Amy's cheeks as everyone turned towards her. "Um… I'm not saying it wouldn't work. It's more like… You didn't obey the safety rules."

Izzy boggled at her, unaware of how ridiculous he looked. Was this really the same girl who had explained a complex chemical reaction to him a few hours ago? His expression shifted from shock to disapproval as she continued. "First of all, ouija boards are considered very dangerous. It's a common misconception that the board itself is the medium, but the spirits supposedly control the _people_ touching the planchette, not the planchette or the board. Thus, ouija board use is a type of possession. That's the basis for the little girl's possession in _The Exorcist_. If you don't use protection and follow the proper procedure, you can invite the anger of a spirit or be possessed by one."

Tai snorted and Davis giggled like a school girl. "What's so funny?" Joe sighed.

"S-sorry," Davis choked. "I just- Protection, procedure- Were we supposed to use some kind of ghost condom?"

Mimi closed her eyes and groaned. "Oh my gawd. They're both riding the same horrible wavelength..."

Amy paused, as if considering a reply, but shook her head and pressed on. "First, um… Again, I've never held a seance, but I think you're supposed to burn sage and place a silver coin on the board as wards against evil spirits. Quartz crystals are also supposed to have a purifying effect, I think?"

Izzy grimaced and backed up until he edged into Mimi. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "S-surely you don't believe that those measures could have any impact on… anything?"

"I'm not even sure if I believe that spirits exist to be contacted. I'm just telling you what I've heard." She shrugged, but didn't meet his eye. He watched her fall into that familiar closed-off posture, folding her limbs around her core, and knew that she was on guard.

"What else went wrong?" Matt asked. Amy's head snapped up, and she furrowed her brow.

"Er… Well, as a general rule, you should never ask a ghost to prove that it's real. That's an invitation to enter our world, and it supposedly functions as a bridge for the spirit."

Davis straightened so quickly that he nearly spilled his hot cocoa. " _Damn_! Is that why the candles blew out and the lantern broke just then?!"

"It was probably a coincidence." Hana laughed, but the sound was high and awkward. Her hands wrapped around Tai's arm.

Amy nodded. "Probably. But that's what they say. The stuff about the planchette counting down through the numbers and making an infinity symbol is troubling, too. When that happens, you're supposed to move the planchette to 'goodbye,' because the spirit is trying to enter your world."

"Yes," Izzy said, cocking a single eyebrow. "Because making random patterns on a board creates an inter-dimensional rift."

A silence followed his words, and Izzy found that his friends were either staring or scowling at him. Amy inched away, her face rapidly flushing. He realized too late that his sarcasm sounded like an attack on Amy's intelligence.

An odd sensation, half panic and half heavy dread, flooded his body. He was still fumbling over what to say when Tai said, "Look, you can give me all the crap you want over supernatural shit. But don't be an ass to her."

"I, I'm sorry," he stammered. "Please continue." He didn't know what had gotten into him. Although he had expressed similar opinions to Tai and Davis last night, his tone was much more biting today.

Amy hunched forward, hugging herself around her middle. "Um… You're supposed to move the planchette to 'goodbye' at the end of the seance. Otherwise, the ghost can linger."

"Linger?" Matt repeated. "What exactly does that mean?"

"I guess the most common side effects of a seance gone wrong are recurring nightmares and night terrors. More extreme cases could include stuff like… Well, you know. Signs of haunting."

"Holy shit," Davis muttered. "Like… Like glasses tipping over on their own?"

 _Don't say anything. You've already put your foot in your mouth once tonight._ Regardless, it was almost painful to watch Davis link his story to the seance. He was familiar with the powers of suggestion, and the last thing he needed was to watch everyone morph their abode into a haunted house by consensus.

"Well… I guess?" Amy held her hands out to the group. "I'm not an expert. I don't know."

Matt rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and Izzy winced. _Don't mention the piano. Be reasonable, Matt, please…_

"Just before Davis screamed, Izzy and I heard the piano playing. Izzy and I went to ask whoever was playing to stop, since it was late, but… There was no one there."

 _And there it is._ Izzy sunk his face into his palm and awaited the inevitable.

Davis cringed. "You know, I thought he was being brainless, but TK said he lost the write up he did of the seance, even though it never left his room. And he also said something about losing all of his pencils overnight."

"Just the pencils?" Amy asked. "Not the pens?"

"Hell if I know," he replied, shrugging.

Hana slapped a hand over her mouth, and Izzy couldn't suppress a quiet groan. "Oh man. The bathrooms downstairs smell so horrible, and it started this morning! Right, Joe?"

He blinked and adjusted his glasses. "Well, that's true. It's really noxious, but it's not… not _quite_ like sewage. Still, I assumed it must have something to do with the plumbing, but the other bathrooms seem to smell fine. Aren't they all connected to the same system?"

"I'm sure there's still a logical explanation," Izzy said, but Tai talked over him.

"Smells? Can a smell be a sign of a ghost?" he asked.

"I've read that it can be," Amy replied. "It's usually foul odors for an unfriendly spirit, but apparently some people smell a loved one's perfume or cologne out of nowhere after they've passed."

"Shit," Tai muttered. "I woke up thinking something was kind of weird, but now it seems worse."

"What's up?" Hana asked. Tai hesitated, then hooked his fingers beneath the hem of his shirt and began to lift. A chorus of groans sounded as he stripped.

"Keep your shirt on, Tai," Matt snapped. Tai ignored him, popped his bushy hair through the collar opening, and dropped the shirt on his lap.

"Look," he said, holding his arms away from his torso. "I woke up with all of these weird ass bruises."

Izzy squinted despite himself, but he couldn't see anything from the other end of the sectional. Amy and Joe stood as one to go inspect his wounds.

"There's so many," Hana said. "What did you _do_ , Tai?"

"I have no freaking clue. That's why it's so weird."

Davis scowled and leaned into him. "I mean, athletes get knocked around, even in soccer. But the marks are so... random. All over the place."

Izzy commanded himself to stay seated, but his curiosity was spiking, causing an itchy feeling of anticipation. Without willing it, he found himself crossing the room and nudging into Amy for a view of Tai's torso.

The athlete's tanned skin was dappled with red marks, randomly distributed over his chest, stomach, and ribs. Most appeared swollen and irate, as if little fists were still beating his flesh.

Joe slid his fingers over a nasty welt on Tai's chest. Tai grimaced, but remained silent through the inspection. "They're fresh," he said. "Almost a day old, I'd say."

"Do they hurt?" Davis asked. He poked one, and Tai responded with a curse. Davis turned to Joe and nodded. "They hurt."

A tiny smile played at Joe's lips. "Helpful, thank you."

"Ass," Tai muttered.

Izzy frowned at the splattering of welts. They were concrete, lingering evidence of strange happenings, but they were also on _Tai's_ body. How far would the athlete go to play a trick on him?

"That is so damned creepy," Davis muttered.

"Are you sure you didn't get them during practice?" Matt asked. "Maybe you fell or took a hit and forgot about it. Hell, maybe you hurt yourself while you were drunk."

"That's true," Izzy said, nodding. "There's no need to jump straight to the occult for an answer."

Tai scowled as he pulled his shirt back on. "I didn't have practice today. The team was too hung over. Coach, too."

Matt's response was cut off by a dramatic gasp from Mimi. "Oh my God, I just remembered! When I woke up this morning, my lipsticks were out of order and scattered on my vanity!"

Izzy frowned at Tai. He was growing more and more suspicious as the strange incident count increased. But the others, Hana and Davis chief amongst them, seemed to grow more restless with each new case.

"Is that so strange?" Sora asked. "You did our makeup last night, so you used them a lot more than you usually do in one day."

"Yeah," Mimi said, "but I always put them away when I'm done. There's an order. Everything has to be in place, so that if I use them in the morning when I'm half asleep, I don't put on the wrong color."

 _Heaven forbid._ Izzy returned to his seat, along with Joe and Amy. The shift in perspective gave him a perfect view of Hana's jittering legs.

"Did you guys bring a ghost home?" she demanded. Izzy guessed that she was trying to sound authoritative, or at least annoyed, but her voice trembled. She kept pressing herself further into Tai, who winced as her bony elbow dug into his side.

Mimi threw her hands on her hips. "Could you guys _not_ make my father's house haunted? He needs to rent it out!"

"I don't think we should jump to conclusions," Sora said. "Although..."

Izzy's eyes pinched shut. _No. No, Sora. Not you, too._

She continued, oblivious to his pleas. "When I woke up this morning, some of my design sketches were spread out on my desk. I was sure I had stored them in my portfolio, like always..."

Amy shivered beside him, and Izzy sighed. "Are we certain that no one is teasing us with pranks?" He posed the question to the group as a whole, but his eyes kept trailing to Tai and Davis.

"Tai!" Hana cried. He groaned as she smacked his chest. "Tai! Are you messing with us?! You had better not be! But you are. You are, r-right?"

"I'm not!" He rubbed his wound and sighed. "I swear, Han. I didn't move anyone's stuff or anything like that."

There was a long silence as everyone looked at one another. Izzy didn't believe Tai for a second, but Sora smiled and said, "We're probably just overreacting. It's easy to jump to scary conclusions at night. We should go to bed, and I'm sure we'll feel better in the morning."

"Sleep? I, I don't know." Hana latched on to Tai's arm. "I'm sleeping with you."

"Only if you promise to stop smacking me," he muttered.

Mimi jumped to her feet. "Ugh! I never really thought about this stuff before, but I'm all creeped out! Joe, come upstairs!"

"Alright," he replied, smiling. As he passed, Izzy whispered his name.

"What are your thoughts on the supernatural?" he asked. Joe blinked, then leaned closer, so he could speak quietly.

"I was really suggestible to anything horror related as a kid. I'm sure you remember that. These days, I'm skeptical about it, but there is one thing I know... People can make themselves physically and mentally sick with fear. Sometimes, it's not relevant whether the thing they fear actually exists. Real or not, it can cause long-lasting effects."

"Joe!" Mimi called. "Come on!"

"Ah- Goodnight." Izzy nodded, then watched as his friend filed out of the room. He followed them into the foyer, with Amy trailing behind.

"You staying the night, Davis?" Tai asked. "You could use Hana's bed, since she's with me."

"Hell no!" Davis trotted to the closet, then paused, frowning at the door. "Um… Wasn't the closet door closed?" he asked.

Izzy sighed and stepped around the freshman, affording himself a view of the closet. The door was, in fact, a few inches open. "There's no need to panic," Izzy said. "Someone simply left it open."

"But we were all just in here!" Davis protested. "It was closed! Right, Tai?"

"Er…" He hovered in the doorway to his bedroom. "I think so? But now I'm not sure. Matt?"

The blond stepped onto the lowest stair. "Nope," he said. "I'm done with this for tonight."

Davis shuddered, pulled out his coat, and shoved it on. "I am so out of here. I'll sleep in my non-haunted dorm room, thanks."

"We're _not_ haunted," Izzy sighed, but Davis was focused on Tai. Ignoring their conversation, Izzy trudged up the stairs. When he reached the top, he saw Sora slip into Matt's room.

 _Don't tell me she's afraid, too._ Izzy swallowed a sigh and wished Sora and Matt a good night, instead. Amy parroted his words sleepily.

They entered their bedroom, and Izzy closed the door. Amy sank onto the bed, dropping his pillow back into place.

"That was really weird..." She offered him a wry smile. "But I guess you aren't afraid."

"I doubt it's as mysterious as it seemed. I still suspect that Tai caused the majority of those occurrences."

She tipped her head to the side and dug her teeth into her lower lip. "Maybe... But his injuries worry me the most."

"That was the most troubling case. However, Tai routinely sustains minor injuries during practices and games, so I fail to see those marks as a portent."

Amy nodded, but offered no comment. Her expression was distant and indecipherable. Izzy tried to read her mood, but all he identified was tension and discomfort. He'd have to probe for details.

"I wasn't aware that you were interested in the occult." Amy winced, and her shoulder blades slid up. Too late, Izzy identified a trace of something unsavory in his tone, but he lacked the social skills to identify it. His teeth gnashed together as he mentally cursed himself and his ineptitude.

Amy pulled her hair over her shoulder and began to finger comb it, her digits darting in and out like fish in a chestnut river. "It's... It's more like I _was_ interested in it. Back in middle school... Well, it started with that box."

She pointed to her dresser, where a small, rectangular box was displayed. Izzy picked it up and came to bed. He slid in, lifted the covers over them, and handed Amy the box. It was made of intricately carved wood, showing a pattern of stars, suns, and moons in varying phases. "It's very pretty," Izzy said.

Her fingers trailed over the lid, but didn't touch the latch. "Thanks. I bought this at a yard sale years ago. At the time, I was interested in the box. I didn't realize that there was anything unusual inside."

Izzy's stomach lurched and sank. Was he wandering into another attempt at a supernatural story? He didn't trust himself to speak, so he forced a smile and nodded.

Amy sighed and sat the box on her lap. "I thought the cards stored inside were a typical deck. But when I came home and took a look, it was clear that they were... not. I looked up the terms printed on the cards and learned that it was a tarot deck."

Izzy's fake smile twitched and faded. "Tarot cards? But- Amy. You're one of the most intelligent, sensible people I know. Surely you don't believe that you can predict the future with pieces of paper."

"Well... No. When I was a kid, I might have thought so, maybe a little. I borrowed a tarot book from the library and learned how to read the cards. I used them as amusement for a while, until Tai found them one day and asked me for a reading. So... I gave him one, and the reading ended up accurate."

 _Of course it did._ Izzy cleared his throat as he searched for a safe reply. "That could happen by chance," he said gently, "but you must see that tarot cards and ouija boards are mass produced objects. They have no magical properties. They're consumer items, like a football or a laptop."

Her shoulders inched up even more, until she resembled a turtle withdrawing into its shell. "It's true that people have found ways to commercialize the occult, just like anything else. But people can perform divinations using nothing but a coin on a string, a table, a mirror, or a pencil and a piece of paper. If you didn't own a ouija board, you could just write one out and improvise a planchette, or play kokkuri-san."

Izzy took a deep breath, willing himself to remain patient. A voice seemed to be screaming inside of him. He wanted to grab Amy's mind, which he found so precious, and carry it back to the world of logic and reason, docking it at that reliable harbor.

"You're an advocate of free choice," he said at last. "But if tarot cards can predict the future, then our destinies must be pre-determined and unchangeable."

"Yeah," Amy sighed. "You could argue it that way. Honestly, the way Tai, Matt, TK, and Kari viewed tarot was different from the way I viewed it. They wanted to hear the future. But personally, I think the value of tarot is that it forces you to think about a problem in multiple ways. If you ask a question and draw a certain card, you have to interpret your question in a way that's relevant to the card's meaning. That can help you consider a problem from fresh perspectives. Tarot users tend to report surges of understanding and sparks of insight when they perform readings. I think that they're coming up with new ideas as a result of thinking in a new way. They're a useful tool."

Izzy stroked his chin as he considered. "That may be... But I've only ever seen you touch that box to place it on the dresser. When did you stop using them?" A tiny, hopeful inflection laced his words. It was possible that, while she enjoyed the occult as a child, Amy had grown out of it.

Hesitating, she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "At first, I liked the attention when my friends came to me for readings. And... Well, I won't lie. You've seen what my home environment was like. The illusion of power, of being special, was... hard to resist."

 _Amy..._ Izzy edged closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. A portion of his irritation died away. "I'm sorry," he murmured. As long as it didn't hurt her, he couldn't begrude her anything that had supported her back then.

She tipped her head against his. "I guess I grew attached to it. But as more and more predictions came true, I started to feel nervous. Kind of creeped out. When Matt suggested that I stop using them, I realized that I felt the same way. I mean, what if there really _is_ something spiritual to it? Will those spirits always be kind? I couldn't answer that, so I put them away in eighth grade, and I haven't opened the box since."

 _What did she predict that convinced her to put the deck away?_ He was curious, but also wary of leading the conversation further into supernatural territory. "But you kept them," he said, nodding to the box waiting by her feet.

His arm rose and fell as she shrugged. "The box is pretty. And they mattered to me when I was younger." She straightened her legs and picked up the box, trailing her thumb over the latch.

Izzy frowned as she popped it open. He was considering closing the topic when her eyelids flared. "What's wrong?" he asked, peeking into the box.

The card on top depicted a tower in a rainstorm. An enormous lightening bolt flashed against an inky sky, striking the structure. One side was already crumbling towards a churning, angry sea.

"Not a very pleasant card, I'd wager," he said dryly.

Amy's front teeth dug into her lower lip. "N-no. It's the tower card. It symbolizes upheaval, disaster. An event that rips the fabric of a life into two pieces: a before and an after. But it's not the card itself that bothers me..."

"No?" Izzy watched her carefully. He didn't like the way her eyes darted around the room, like a rabbit checking for predators.

"Whenever I finished using them, I stored my cards face down, and in order. The top card should have been the Fool. And where's my quartz crystal?"

Izzy released a breath in a long, relieved hiss. This, at least, was easy to explain. "Ah, well. You said your friends were interested in the cards. Someone probably rifled through them over the years."

Amy flipped the card back over and closed the box. "Y-yeah. You're probably right. We should get to sleep. Honestly, I'm pretty spooked, so I don't think I should worry about this now."

Izzy kissed her cheek and slipped the box out of her hands. "That's for the best. Certain settings naturally lend themselves to fear and paranoia, and our friends amply created one tonight."

"Created?" Amy tipped her head as he returned the box to its spot on the dresser. "So... You really think Tai did all of that stuff?"

Izzy turned the night light, flipped off the overhead light, and climbed into bed. Amy cuddled into him, resting her head on his chest. Her breathing slowly went deep and even, and Izzy guessed that she was matching it to his heartbeat.

He stroked her hair. "I do. There's nothing to fear," he murmured. "Please don't allow the alarm of our friends to trouble you."

A pause stretched on for so long that Izzy assumed she had drifted off. He was more alseep than awake when she whispered, "You really don't believe in anything supernatural?"

"I don't." He smiled in the dark and placed a hand on her waist, cupping her side. "And I promise you, if any ghosts come for us in the night, I'll protect you."

She snorted and kissed his chest above the heart. They gradually fell asleep, curled up together as a defense against the cold and the dark.

 **Author's notes:** Man, it's hard to manage scenes with this many people. The description and close narration just dive off a cliff. I'm sorry I didn't have time to smooth this out more. I only had time for one basic edit- I probably missed simple problems! It would benefit a lot from more fine tuning, but I just don't have the time, not if I want to complete it tomorrow.

It's probably not even scary, just… troubling. But things really escalate next chapter, and Amy decides that the only way to appease the spirit is to return to the graveyard…

For anyone irritated by Izzy's blasé attitude towards the occult, hang in there XD

I'm going to try really hard to do that, but keep your fingers crossed! I probably have to write 2-4,000 more words tomorrow, and edit the chapter before I can post it. I'm not sure if that's possible.

Check back tomorrow evening to see if I pulled it off! Thanks for reading and reviewing :D Happy Halloween!


	3. Vengeful Spirits

**Vengeful Spirits**

Izzy woke to the sound of drumming. It was completely dark, and despite lying stationary in bed, he was disoriented. Groaning, he rolled over, intending to rise and investigate. He hit a hard, cold wall.

Panic and confusion struck him like a blow. Through sheer will power and morbid curiosity, he forced himself to investigate further, shutting off his emotional response. He found walls surrounding him on all sides, forming a box barely larger than his body. His heart galloped in his chest, working so hard that it ached. But even through the fear, and despite knowing that he had never been shoved into a box in the past, he felt an odd sense of deja vu.

Izzy banged on the wood above him and called for help, fighting to be heard over the drumming. When he lowered his fist, he found a crude, circular face staring down at him with empty eyes, luminous in the darkness. A jolt of terror skid along his nerves, then gave way to recognition.

" _You!_ " he cried. "I'm dreaming! Izzy ignored the face's cackling as best he could, a difficult feat when it laughed with two entwined voices. He slapped his cheeks, but the sting failed to rouse him.

The face pouted. "Trying to leave, Isaac? You're no fun. Maybe we'd like the girl better."

Izzy gasped. He tried to sit up and was rewarded with a blow to the head. The drumming grew louder and faster in tempo, until it outstripped his frenzied pulse. Pushing his pain and panic aside, Izzy hissed, "Leave her _alone!"_

"Oh!" The face giggled and began to sway from side to side like a pendulum. "Are you scared? Do you believe in us now?"

Frankly, Izzy couldn't spare a thought for dreams, ghosts, and so on if Amy was at risk. He scowled and attempted to sound commanding, despite his ragged breathing. "If you have an issue with me, then limit your quarrel to me."

"But you're _boring!_ " The merged voices took on a high, whiny note, like petulant children. "We want the girl!" The thudding reached a crescendo, and the temperature slipped from cold to icy. Shuddering, Izzy wrapped his arms around himself and tried to breathe. The amount of oxygen was rapidly declining in the airtight coffin.

"Leave her!" Izzy choked. The face blurred and faded as he fought for air. All he registered was cruel laughter, the sweet voices of children twisted with hate. Just before everything went completely black, they whispered, "How will you protect her now, Isaac?"

Then a horrible scream drowned out the drumming. Izzy's eyes burst open, and the faint haze of red illumination from the night light registered. This time, when he sat up, there was no barrier. He had shifted from dreaming to waking in a heartbeat, sweating and shaking beneath his covers.

The wailing continued, and Izzy clamped his hands to his ears and searched for the source. Amy was thrashing beside him, rising and falling against the mattress as her body convulsed. Her eyes were rolled back, the whites gleaming in the dim light. Her lungs, strong with their vocalist training, sucked in air and converted it into an explosion of sound. It seemed to reverberate even as it continued, pounding him from all sides.

"Amy! Amy!" Izzy lunged towards her. Her elbow smashed his temple, and the room spun on impact. The screams flooded his ears, pierced his brain, assaulted every nerve. Her clear, sweet voice was ravaged by terror and despair.

 _Is this a seizure? Some kind of fit?_ Izzy had never seen someone behave like this, jerking like a beached fish and shrieking. When the bedroom door was thrown open, he shouted, "Get Joe!" without looking away from Amy.

"Holy shit! Matt, go!" Tai's voice thundered through the room just as Amy paused for breath. The overhead light flicked on, and Izzy watched, transfixed, as her ribs and diaphragm expanded beneath her camisole. Her hand twitched to her eyes, shielding them from the sudden illumination. And then another scream ripped through the night.

Tai scrambled to Amy's side of the bed. "What's wrong? Amy!" He leaned over her convulsing form and reached out.

"Stop!" Izzy cried, but it was too late. When Tai took her hand and pulled it away from her eyes, her thrashing intensified. The screaming jumped an octave in pitch as her free arm swung around, slashing through the air, searching blindly for a target. The first few passes cut through empty space, but the last caught Tai on the eye.

He gasped a string of shocked obscenities and released her. Amy's fingers curled, displaying fingernails that Mimi had shaped and painted. Izzy lunged forward as she clawed at Tai's face, but he was on guard now. His arm rose, blocking the blow. "What the fuck?!" he cried. "Shit, her eyes...!"

Izzy swallowed hard. Her twitching, rolling eyes were even more frightening with the light on. He almost expected her to start lathering at the mouth. He was paralyzed, frozen in a kneeling position on the bed, hands reaching in vain. "It's okay," he whispered, more to himself than to her. "Joe's coming. It's okay."

He turned at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Joe ran into the room, followed by Matt, Sora, and their other house mates. Joe paused by the foot of the bed, cursed, and turned to the crowd of people clogging the doorway.

"Izzy and Tai are with me. Matt, you're on standby outside the door with your phone. Everyone else, _out_."

"Joe!" Mimi cried, struggling to be heard over Amy. "What's _wrong_ with her? What's happening? She looks- It's like she's possessed!"

Izzy jerked so hard that his back cracked. His dream had faded from memory at Amy's first scream, but it came rushing back with the force of a sledge hammer. He buckled, cradling his forehead. _But it, it couldn't be… It's not possible…_

Joe watched her with a sharp, professional expression that simultaneously calmed and annoyed Izzy. "It looks bad, but it's nothing serious; just night terrors. She'll be alright, but I need everyone to listen to me. The best thing you can do is to go back to your rooms, and don't worry about her. She'll be fine soon." And with that, Joe turned his back to the group of pale, wide-eyed faces and stepped up to the bed, nudging Tai aside.

No one moved until Matt snapped into action and shooed everyone out of the room. Despite a smattering of protests, he closed the door behind him.

"What the hell is going on?!" Tai demanded. He crowded Joe's back, cradling his injury with one hand and reaching for Amy with the other, inching around Joe.

Joe was rapt and focused, apparently unperturbed by Amy's wailing and spasming. Despite the veil of horror shrouding his mind, Izzy admired Joe's composure. "You mentioned night terrors?" he prompted, calming slightly.

Joe nodded. "I've seen this in the hospital," he shouted. "It's always been children, though. The stress of sleeping overnight in a hospital can cause it. Think of this as an alarming form of sleep walking. She's somewhere between asleep and awake."

"Shit, _seriously_?" Tai asked. "So we can just wake her up?"

Joe held his arms out protectively. "Don't. Generally, the disorientation upsets the victim further. It's common for adult sufferers of night terrors to behave violently in self defense if they're woken."

Tai's hands curled into fists. "Get out of the way! Do you think I care if she hits me?! I can't watch her like this!"

"Then get out." Joe stood firm and tipped his head towards the bedroom door. "The best thing to do is to wait and monitor her. The fit should pass on its own within twenty minutes."

The muscles in Tai's torso pushed up beneath his skin, as if they wanted to pop through. "Twenty minutes? _Twenty minutes_ of this?! Joe, she sounds like she's being tortured. We, we _can't_ -"

Izzy ignored their argument, returning his full attention to Amy. Joe's assurances helped, since he at least knew that she wasn't in danger. But watching her suffer and being unable to help her, or even to touch her, was unbearable. His heart pounded like a body falling down stairs, gaining more volume and momentum with each strike.

As if in response to his thoughts, her screaming stopped with the abruptness of flipping a switch. The silence that followed assailed Izzy's ears like a jackhammer. He turned to the other boys, then back to Amy when she whimpered.

"D-don't." Her eyes snapped straight ahead, staring at the wall. Izzy and Tai moved closer.

"Try talking to her," Joe whispered. "Quietly. Calmly."

"Amy?" Izzy inched closer cautiously, until his fingertips brushed her arm. Her skin was molten compared to his, and sticky with a sheen of sweat.

She turned towards him, but stared sightlessly through him. Muscles strained and twitched in her face, and dark veins lined her eyes, granting them the illusion of bleeding. Tai whispered profanities until Joe hushed him.

"Don't hurt him," she moaned, pressing her eyes shut. "Izzy… No- _no!_ "

Izzy swayed and caught himself against the headboard. "Amy," he breathed. "Amy, I'm fine." Despite his inability to control someone else's dreams, guilt consumed him. Nausea curdled in his stomach as he recalled the ghosts' final words in his dream. Heedless of his safety, he wrapped his arms around her. To his surprise, she curled into him, trembling and whimpering. Her muttering became incomprehensible, then slowly tapered off.

Tai released a long, shaky breath. "Damn. That must have been one hell of a nightmare. Do you think it's because of all the crap that's been happening?" His lips twisted into a grimace, and Izzy guessed that he was feeling guilty, too. This time, when Tai reached for Amy, Joe didn't interfere. The athlete's tension visibly decreased when his hand closed around hers.

Joe frowned as he sank onto the foot of the bed. "Hmm... Well, technically a night terror isn't a nightmare. They occur during different parts of the sleep cycle and are caused by different mental mechanisms." He checked his wristwatch, then jerked back.

"What's up?" Tai asked.

"Er..." Joe scratched his head, looking puzzled. "You went to sleep after our group talk, right?"

Izzy nodded and tipped Amy's head against his shoulder. She groaned and made a fretful hand motion, like a child waving away a doctor holding a needle. "Yes," he muttered, stroking her cheek.

"That's odd... She should have been in her REM cycle by now. Night terrors generally occur much earlier in the sleep cycle than this..."

"Perhaps she woke up at some point?" Izzy suggested. "I don't mean to offend, but I'm more interested in our next course of action."

Joe sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Honestly? There's nothing medically wrong with her. I wouldn't do anything yet. A single case of night terrors isn't an issue, especially if it really was triggered by stress involving the seance and our conversation. Did she seem frightened by it?"

Izzy paused, recalling their talk before bed. "She was uneasy, but she didn't seem distressed. I never would have guessed that she was truly frightened." He licked his lips, which were painfully dry, and stared at the other boys. "Could I have misread her?"

Tai reached over and cuffed him on the shoulder. "Please. You know she's tough. Besides, she'll tell you when she's scared. This was probably just some freak thing. Right, Joe?"

"Let's hope so. If it keeps happening, she'll need an MRI and a psychologist. But for now, the only damage is a decrease in sleep quality. She might not even remember this, so we'll have to decide whether we should tell her about it or not."

Tai cocked an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Honestly? Just to spare her the embarrassment. That's partially why I kicked everyone out. Would you want people to see you like that?"

Izzy closed his eyes and sighed. "You're right. The fewer witnesses, the better."

"Geez," Tai breathed. "You really stay chill under pressure. I never would have guessed! If it's not medical, you flip out worse than anyone."

Joe rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Tai."

If he wasn't feeling so raw, Izzy might have laughed. "You kept an impressively level head. Thank you for your help, and for considering her feelings."

Joe blinked, then slowly smiled. "No problem. She's not completely out of it yet, but I think everything is under control now. If you need me, don't hesitate to wake me. Can I get you anything before I go back to bed?"

Izzy gazed down at Amy. She had fallen silent, but her face still cycled through faint expressions of pain and fear. "Is she truly alright?"

Joe patted Izzy's shoulder. "I know this was tough to watch, but the odds that anything is wrong are low. Don't worry. For now, just stay close to her and try to sleep. I'll let everyone know that she's alright, and that we're waiting on your decision to know if we should bring this up with her or not tomorrow."

"Dude, just tell her," Tai sighed. "She'll know something happened when everyone walks on eggshells around her. It will be less confusing if she knows why."

"You might be right," Joe admitted. "We'll worry about it tomorrow. Tai, come downstairs with me. I want to get an ice pack on that eye..."

"Yeah," Tai said, wincing. He edged around Joe and bent over Amy, watching her grimace and shake. The flecks of gold had faded from his brown eyes.

"Feel better," he whispered. He trailed his fingertips over her cheek, then straightened and nodded at Izzy. "Take care of her."

Izzy almost smiled. "Of course. Could you help me lay her down?"

Tai lifted the covers, slid an arm beneath her knees, and eased her onto her back while Izzy supported her upper body. Joe inspected her one more time, smiled soothingly, and assured them that she was fine. By the time they said goodnight, turned out the lights, and left the room, Amy was almost sleeping normally, except for her shallow breaths and slight shuddering.

Izzy shifted to his side, wrapped an arm around her waist, and held her against him. Over the next ten minutes, the shaking stopped, and she shifted to the slow, peaceful breathing that signaled sleep. He released a long sigh, then kissed her forehead, her nose, and her cheek. _You frightened me so terribly. I'm so sorry._

He held her for a long time, keeping watch, as if his vigil would ward off future episodes. Despite his best efforts, his dream kept slipping back into his mind, taunting him with the threat against Amy. _Could Mimi be correct? Surely, there's no such thing as possession, but the timing is so eerie…_ Biting his lip, he curled around Amy and pulled her into him, unconsciously shielding her. He twitched whenever the old house groaned in the night.

Slowly, light began to filter through the blinds, creating a pattern of horizontal bands on the bed. The signs of dawn eased some of Izzy's strain, and a chorus of bird song lifted his spirits. _Joe explained the origin of this incident already. It's a known psychological effect on a strained mind._

Thus reassured, Izzy carefully backed away from Amy and rose. He retrieved his laptop and sat on the bed, propped up against the headboard. He tried to focus on his work, but he glanced at Amy every few minutes to ensure that she was still alright.

Eventually, his phone alarm went off, and he silenced it on the first ring. He closed his laptop and slid it to the side, then stretched the stiffness out of his back. Amy sighed and rolled over, and Izzy leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. He thought he had calmed completely, but the last thread of tension finally broke when she smiled.

"Good morning," he murmured. Amy tilted her head and yawned.

"You're sitting up. Were you already awake?"

"I'm afraid I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. Excuse me." Izzy backed away enough to lie down with her. She squished herself against him, burying her face in his chest.

"Did you get enough sleep?"

The corner of Izzy's mouth twitched up. "Yes, Amy." Both Joe and Amy fretted over his sleep schedule, which featured late nights programming followed by early mornings of the same. Usually the lack of rest didn't bother him, but he knew he would require extra coffee today.

"Hmm." The grunt was distinctly skeptical. Izzy threaded an arm around her side and waited. He had spent the last few hours wondering if Amy would remember her night terrors, but she was focused on snuggling, and he didn't know how to broach the topic.

"Ah, did you sleep well?" he asked at last. He flinched when her body tensed.

"Actually... I think I remember being afraid." Her forehead crinkled as she thought. "No... _Terrified_." She inched back from him enough to reveal wide, anxious eyes. "But... why?"

Something seized Izzy's heart and twisted it like a dishrag. He imagined the chambers emptying of blood with a squelch. "It's alright," he murmured, cupping her cheek. "Don't force yourself to remember."

"No." Her eyes shifted to that hazy, far-off expression that he knew so well. "No. I _do_ remember it. At first, it was like last night's nightmare. You were being buried alive, but this time, I was physically there. Someone in a black robe was shoveling dirt on top of your... of a grave. You were inside; I could hear you calling for help. I grabbed the person's arm, begging him to stop, and when he lifted his head..."

Her face blanched rapidly. "It's okay," Izzy whispered, but if she heard him, she gave no indication.

"At first I thought there was nothing inside the hood. There was a body in there- I was holding an arm- but there was no face, no neck. Just darkness. Then this spark of light formed and widened, until it looked like a flashlight beam, round and bright."

A shiver danced down Izzy's spine. His brain scrambled for an explanation, struggling until the insides of his skull seemed to fill with thick smoke. Two identical dreams could be rationalized as being caused by similar diets, experiences, and environments, but how could he account for their dreams fitting together to form a narrative from two perspectives? Although the November morning was chilly, Izzy's brow itched with the beginnings of sweat.

"The mote of light... It had simple features, black slits for the eyes, nose, and mouth. It smiled so wide that the circle was separated into two and said..."

Her grip on him tightened, and Izzy embraced her. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "Everything is fine."

She drew a long, shuddering breath and began to tremble. "It said that it was going to teach you respect for the dead by... by killing me, and then you, and Izzy, I know this sounds like a silly stock nightmare, but it felt so _real_ , and the mote had two voices- children's voices, wound together!- and it was so cold, and he picked up his shovel and, and- It bludgeoned me, over and over- blood everywhere-"

Izzy squeezed her close, tightening his grip on her until his arms ached. He tried not to visualize her description, but images slipped in uninvited. Bile rose in his throat. "Amy, I'm so sorry. I should have listened to you more patiently last night, so you could express your fear and lessen it. I should have asked the others not to mention the seance. You're so sensitive to how people feel, of course the morbid atmosphere impacted you... I should have… I should have… I'm so sorry. Can I do anything for you?"

She sniffled, and hot moisture spread against the crook of his neck. "Actually, I... There is something. If you don't mind."

The image of her thrashing in bed seized his brain, accompanied by those tortured screams. "Anything," he whispered.

Her fingertips shifted nervously along his back. "I... Don't be mad. Please. I think... I don't know if we'll be able to sleep soundly again unless you..."

She swallowed hard and fell silent. "Yes?" he prompted.

"You need to go back to the graveyard," she whispered against his neck. "All five of you."

The words came out in a nervous rush, and Izzy had to pause to decipher them. Once he understood, he required another moment to process the content. "I- I beg your pardon?"

She jerked back, regarding him with wide, wet eyes. "You didn't finish the seance properly. That's why strange things are happening in the house." Her voice was tiny and fluttery, but unflagging.

"Amy..." Izzy stroked her back and sighed. "I don't think your rough night was the work of a ghost." He winced when he realized that his absolute certainty from yesterday had not survived the night. He paused, hesitating between his instinct to rely on logic and his mounting fears.

"The most logical explanation is small scale hysteria caused by sharing the story of the seance," he said at last. "The most likely remedy is to address any lingering fears you have."

"Alright," Amy said slowly. "Then let's do that. I know it's unlikely, but my fear is that you offended a spirit, and that you offered that spirit a path to our door. So we can address my fear by apologizing to the spirit and asking it to return to its world."

Izzy felt his eyes widening. "But- Amy, surely you see that there's nothing to gain from another seance. What if it only excites the others more, increasing everyone's fear? That seems the only likely effect." He caressed her face and swallowed hard. What would he do if a second seance caused a second night terror episode?

Her hands tightened against his back, stretching and shifting his skin. "Please, Izzy," she whispered. "I know it sounds like nonsense to you. I'm sorry. But... Please. _Please_ , I don't ever want to feel the way I did last night again."

She huddled into him, and molten trails of tears wet his skin, disappearing in the fabric of his undershirt. As always, her crying caused instinctive, gut-wrenching panic, and the urge to give her whatever she required was overwhelming. "Alright," he said, swallowing hard.

"Really?" She slid away from him, revealing bloodshot eyes rimmed with red.

"Yes." He forced a smile, hoping it didn't look as brittle as it felt. "I'll do whatever you need. I promised to protect you, didn't I?"

A tiny grin softened her expression. She sniffed and wiped her eyes, clearing away the moisture. "So you say, but your shenanigans brought a ghost home, mister."

Izzy tweaked her nose and grinned when she snorted in protest. "Tai's shenanigans, rather. But fair enough."

Amy sighed and fell back against her pillow. "What time is it, anyway? Are we be late for class?"

Izzy's smile faltered. "No. I suspected that we'd need to talk, so I set the alarm earlier than usual. But… Are you sure you feel well enough to attend class?"

She tipped her head and frown. "How did you guess that? And yeah, I'm tired, but you know I have to go to my classes."

Izzy cleared his throat, stalling for time as he considered his options. How could he possibly explain last night's events? Was there any way to make her understand the horror of watching her have a night terror? He tried to gather his thoughts, but they scattered like prey animals in the shadow of a wolf. The best he could do was speak and hope that the right words would follow. He pulled her into him, and she cuddled against his side.

"Actually, Amy... Although I fear that this will alarm you further, I should tell you about what happened last night..."

 **Soon After**

One difficult explanation and long, hot shower later, Izzy and Amy were dressing and packing their book bags for a day of classes. She was silent and subdued, and it was painful to watch. Izzy searched his mind for words of comfort.

"It's really nothing to be ashamed of," he said at last. Amy twitched, nearly dropping the binder she was packing, but said nothing. He found himself babbling, as if hoping to find the perfect words by throwing out as many as possible. "Yesterday's events _were_ unusual and frightening. Everyone seemed affected. I'll tell the others not to fuss over you. I'm sure Joe will want to ask you some questions, but-"

A piercing, drawn-out shriek drowned out the rest of his chatter. Amy jumped and whirled around. Her eyes locked on his, wide and still veined with red. Izzy stared back for a moment, then turned towards the bedroom door. The scream stopped as suddenly as it had started, leaving a cold, nearly tangible silence in its wake.

For a moment, he was held in place, spellbound with horror. Then Amy leaped forward, opened the door, and threw herself into the hallway. " _Mimi!_ " she cried. Izzy scrambled after her, moving into the hall just as another door banged open. Matt and Sora spilled out, almost like liquid, scrambling for footing on the sleek wooden floors. Izzy ran down the hall, fighting to reach Mimi's room before Amy did, but her head start was too pronounced. He hissed as she threw the door back and charged into the room. Izzy followed her and was nearly knocked aside by Matt.

The cavernous bedroom was dim. The blinds were still shuttered behind billowing, lightweight curtains, and the flower-shaped night light did little to combat the darkness filling the room from floor to vaulted ceiling. Two shadowy forms were vaguely visible through the gauzy curtains on the canopy bed that reigned over the room.

"It's okay," Joe called. "We're f-fine. Don't panic."

Amy flew to the bed and pulled the canopy back. Izzy grimaced at Joe's high-pitched squeal. "A-Amy, please, I'm not decent-"

She ignored him and bent over Mimi, cupping her face. "Boys stay back," she ordered. Izzy abruptly stopped and stepped back, colliding with Matt. Sora ushered the pair of them towards the door, allowing them remain in earshot, but not in the line of sight.

Sora grabbed Mimi's silky robe from the floor and brought it to the bed. "What's wrong?" she asked, slipping it behind the curtain of fabric.

Even with Tai and Hana skidding down the hall, Izzy heard Mimi's groan. Sora plucked a pair of sweatpants off the floor and tossed them behind the curtain as Tai collided with the boys in the portal.

"What the hell?!" he demanded. "Move it!"

"One second," Matt said, but Tai bowled through them and swatted the wall, hitting the light switch. Izzy's eyes fixed on Mimi's willowy arm protruding through the canopy. A picture from Amy's illustrated book of Authurian legend flashed through his memory: _Mist rose from the water of a lake, swirling around an arm rising from the still, dark surface. The delicate, feminine hand gripped an immense sword, lifting it with unnatural ease._

Izzy shook his head, pulling himself back to the present. He followed Mimi's pointing finger to her mirror and instinctively recoiled. Red, oozing streaks marred its surface, spelling out a message in crude, childish writing:

 _I AM REAL._

A strange sensation overwhelmed him, equal parts terror and electricity. Tai and Matt cursed in unison behind him, and Sora sank onto the bed. Hana squealed like a piglet and fled the room. Only Amy failed to react, standing perfectly still scant feet away from the inscription.

Breathing deeply, she squared her shoulders and approached the vanity. " _Amy!_ " Mimi gasped, but the vocalist ignored her. Izzy forced his stiff legs to move until he stood beside her.

Interestingly, Amy was inspecting the vanity surface, not the mirror. She scooped up an open lipstick, turned around, and held it out to the others. "It's not blood."

Mimi rose so quickly that a flash of pink was Izzy's only warning before being pushed aside. "What the hell!" she shrieked. "This is one of my most expensive lipsticks! It's not a stupid crayon! Ugghhh, the end is all flat!"

The urge to laugh tickled at Izzy's throat, and he satisfied it with a cough. Mimi shook with a combination of fear and rage as she turned her scathing glare to her vanity. "Oh my God! The ghost _stole some of my lipsticks_!"

Something punched Izzy's gut, slamming laughter up from his diaphragm. His eyes watered with the effort to contain it. _Well, you see, the underworld ball is coming up, and…_ He turned to Tai automatically, expecting to see him doubled over with the effort to hold in his mirth.

Instead, he found wide eyes and a tense, hard expression. Izzy's amusement faltered, but he wouldn't be fooled that easily. "Hadn't you better return Mimi's lipsticks, Tai?"

Tai stepped back as Mimi whirled around, fixing him with a glare that could shrivel a flower. His nostrils flared as he held his hands out. "Dude, do you think I have a death wish? I didn't take them! Ask Hana; I've been up with her since Amy's attack."

Amy flinched and sat the lipstick down. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

Mimi slammed her hands against the vanity, then tore them through her hair. "What the hell is happening here? This, this is all so messed up, I can't even…"

Joe slid off of the bed and came to Mimi, drawing his arm around her waist. "Lie down," he murmured. "Relax. Let's just think about this, alright?"

Mimi leaned into him, but resisted his tug towards the bed. "Who did it?!" she demanded, pointing at her mirror with a trembling hand. "This isn't funny! You're gonna give someone a heart attack!"

Joe gazed from face to face, his expression stern. "If someone is up to something, this is definitely the time to stop. It's not funny anymore." His eyes fell on Amy before jerking away. "Too much stress can cause physical symptoms."

Tai frowned as everyone turned to him. "What- I swear, I haven't done anything! And even if I did before, do you think I'd keep at it after Amy..."

Izzy recoiled, dazed by the force of that truth. And if Tai hadn't done this, then who did? He glanced around the room as surreptitiously as possible, observing the suspects. Matt, Sora, and Joe seemed unlikely, purely based on personality. While they could have joined in on a prank in its larval stage, they would have confessed after Amy's attack. Izzy could practically see the steam rising from Mimi's ears, so he doubted that she was involved in this episode, at least. Which left...

"Hana?" he suggested. As if on cue, the dancer stumbled back into the room. Her movements were jerky and sharp, almost robotic in comparison to her typical fluid gait. She was bent over and coughing.

Tai moved towards her, arms outstretched. "Han? What's wrong?"

Amy clapped a hand to her face, and Izzy whirled around to see what she was looking at. It was just Sora and Matt, also covering their noses and mouths. He was about to ask what was wrong when a stench rolled through his nose and slammed into his receptors, causing a billion minuscule train collisions. He staggered back, eyes watering.

"Is that- Is that _you_ , Han?" Tai asked. To his credit, the athlete was still advancing on his girlfriend, despite the odor following her tiny body. He grimaced like a two-year-old being offered broccoli.

Amy made a retching noise and stepped back, bumping Mimi's vanity. Izzy was seconds away from grabbing her and taking shelter in the closet. He couldn't quite name what he was smelling, partially because the odor was layered, and partially because his brain had already collapsed and offered up its white flag.

"Is, is that... Ammonium sulfide?" Amy choked. "Ethyl mercaptan?"

Hana turned wide, streaming eyes to her. "W-what?"

Amy swallowed hard. "Uh, b-basically rotten eggs and skunk."

Hana straightened and laughed. The sound was high and choppy, brimming with infectious fear. Her skin was paler than Amy's, shifting to the icy shade of a corpse. "D-did anyone leave either of those in the basement bathroom?"

"Shut the door," Mimi ordered. "And open the windows!"

"Shit," Matt whispered as he grabbed the door knob. Sora shifted closer, inching her face towards Matt's neck. Knowing him, it was probably anointed with cologne, even at this hour.

Hana clung to Tai's shirt and sagged into him. She looked up at him, lips quivering, emerald eyes streaming. "I can't take this! W-What's going on?! Is it really a _g-ghost_?"

There was a stiff pause as the question floated around the room, spreading to every corner just as surely as the stench. "It's morning!" Hana cried. "Scary stuff isn't supposed to happen now! That's not even fair!"

Izzy frowned at the message on the mirror. Hana had a point. Most signs of haunting were imagined by the viewer, phantoms half seen in the dark. They disappeared without fail by morning. "We have physical evidence," he murmured. "But it's all easy to explain away as pranks or other circumstances."

"Yeah, but none of us _did_ anything," Tai snapped. "We already went over that."

"What about Davis? TK? They have spare keys, correct?"

"TK hasn't visited for a few days, and Davis seemed pretty freaked out yesterday." Matt scowled at the crimson letters on the mirror. "Uh, Amy... Didn't you say that night terrors are a sign of haunting? That's not something anyone could cause to happen."

"It is strange for an adult to have night terrors out of the blue," Joe muttered. "It's not outside the realm of possibility, and this kind of stress certainly increases the probability, but..." He shook his head and sighed. "Regardless, how are you feeling, Amy?"

"I'm fine." She turned around and stared at the mirror. Izzy watched her shoulders rise and set, shifting to defiance. "But... I think it's time to do something about this."

 _Ah._ Izzy nudged Mimi's canopy aside and sat on the edge of her bed. He tried to mentally prepare himself for a recitation of Amy's plan. _You don't have to say anything. Treat it as an opportunity to observe the others for reactions._

Matt lifted a golden eyebrow. "What do you have in mind?"

She didn't turn around, but Izzy saw her embarrassed, hesitant expression in the mirror. "I don't claim to be an expert in the occult. I still don't know if I believe in ghosts. All I know for sure is that there are rules associated with using a ouija board, they were broken, and now the house is filled with signs of ghosts." Amy pivoted and held a hand out beneath the script on the glass, offering it as evidence. "I think we should go back to the graveyard, apologize to the ghost, and close the game properly. It's not Halloween anymore, but people say the veil between worlds is thin throughout Samhain. Theoretically, contacting the same ghost shouldn't be a problem?"

Mimi fell onto her bed with a plop, dragging Joe with her. "What's Samhain?"

"It's a Celtic holiday," Amy replied. "November first. It marks the start of winter and the Celtic new year, but it's also the Gaelic word for the month of November."

"Wow," Sora said. "I didn't know any of that. This is a bit complicated, isn't it?"

Hana pressed herself into Tai. "Y-You want to do the seance again? What if we piss the ghost off even more?"

Amy sighed and sagged against the vanity. "I guess that's possible. But I don't like the way things keep escalating. What will happen if we do nothing?"

"Shit," Tai whispered. Hana flinched.

"W-what?"

"Oh." He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. "I was just thinking of that scene in _The Shining_ when the elevator doors open and a flood of blood rushes out."

"Tai!" Mimi and Hana shrieked in unison. Mimi wagged a finger at him with one hand and clung to Joe with the other. "Don't give the ghost ideas! I keep telling you, my father has to rent this place out!"

Matt's lips thinned into a tiny line. "I don't like it, but I think we should try it."

If possible, Hana's color drained even more. "But- But- Are all of us going?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Matt replied. "Things went sour last time because we were drunk and messing around. It's better to keep the group small and serious. We should probably have everyone from Halloween come back, though, so we can all apologize…"

Tai visibly relaxed, loosening his grip on Hana. "Yeah. So the five of us will go back tonight and play nice. And don't forget, it really got mad when Izzy said it wasn't real, so we can't say anything like that again."

"Why would that annoy a ghost?" Joe asked. "I mean, it _isn't_ real, if you define 'real' as 'of the physical world.'"

"Hell if I know," Tai said, shrugging. "Amy, could you teach us those ouija board rules again? I don't think I remember everything."

"I assumed she was accompanying us," Izzy said. Tai jerked to face her, and Amy produced a weak smile.

Matt nodded. "Yeah, that makes the most sense. It's risky to do this without her."

"Er, are you sure it isn't riskier to hold the seance _with_ her?" Joe asked. "I'm concerned about triggering more night terrors.

"I'll be alright," Amy said. "I'll feel better if I know exactly what happened."

Tai gave her an assessing look. "If you really want to go," he said slowly, "I won't stop you. Hell, I can't stop you. But seriously, don't feel like you have to do this. We can take care of it."

"I'm worried about you, but I think you had better go, too." Sora smiled at Amy, showering her with the soft, encouraging warmth that was her unique currency. "You think of everyone's feelings, so I know you can settle a misunderstanding."

"Oh!" The corners of Amy's mouth nudged up. "Thank you. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll try my best."

"Good!" Mimi cried. "I'm counting on you! This is seriously getting freaky. And you all had better take care of her!"

"Uh, guys?" Joe said, checking his phone. "Anyone with an early class had better get moving. Is everyone alright?"

"Not until I scrub that mirror," Mimi growled. "Ugh, gawd, what a waste of lipstick… Stupid ghost!"

Izzy had a class, so he slid off the bed. Amy followed him to their room and shut the door behind her. She sank onto the bed with a long sigh.

Izzy sat beside her and wrapped his hand around hers. "Is something wrong?"

She leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. "Do you still think someone is pranking us, Izzy?"

He felt each separate rib shift outward as he inhaled, then abruptly collapse when he sighed. His gaze slid from her face to the floor, where his feet shuffled uncomfortably. "Before you had your attack, I was completely certain of that. But now… Well, I don't see who among us would risk your safety for the sake of a practical joke. While I'm reluctant to allow the possibility of the supernatural, and while I assume that a rational explanation remains… I'll admit that I'm flummoxed."

Her fingers tightened around his. "I know what you mean. And there's something else bothering me, too…"

"Other than the smell?" Izzy joked, hoping to lighten the tension. She grinned, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"It's probably nothing, but… In my dream, the ghost had two entwined voices. They were both young, and I think one belonged to a girl, and the other to a boy. But the message on the mirror said ' _I am real_ ,' not ' _we are real_.' Do you think that means something?"

He tried to suppress a shudder, but it tumbled over his body like an icy trickle of water. Although he hated to admit it, even to himself, their synchronized dreams disturbed him. A few identical details could be explained away, but this level of similarity was uncanny. And that final threat against Amy, uttered in his mind seconds before her night terror, caused a thrill of fear and sick hopelessness unlike any he had ever felt.

His teeth sank into his lower lip until the skin nearly split. Blinking back a stunned tear of pain, Izzy forced himself to focus on Amy's question. "I'm not sure how useful that is," he said at last. "Your dream, while frightening, isn't necessarily a portent." _It's still just a dream. Right?_

"I know," Amy murmured. She inched closer, until their hips were smushed together. Her body shook, and Izzy wrapped an arm around her waist.

"Are you sure you're alright? Perhaps it would be wise to rest."

Amy shook her head. "No thanks. I want to go out in the sunlight and think about everyday stuff like classes."

Izzy managed a tiny smile. "Yes, I suppose that is the best remedy. But if you feel ill today, please rest. Feel free to call me."

"Izzy…" Amy cupped his cheeks and kissed him softly. When she tried to pull back, Izzy held her in place for a few more beats. The contact and the warmth fed something inside of him, easing his fear and uncertainty.

Her lips curved into a smile against his. "We'll be late," she whispered. Izzy shrugged, and she tickled his ribs until he released her.

"If you insist," he said. They gathered their backpacks and moved to the bedroom door, where Izzy paused. "I know it's difficult, but try not to focus on this too much during the day. Everything will work out."

Amy smiled and kissed his cheek, but her bloodshot eyes marred her cheerful expression. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm fine."

Izzy wasn't convinced, but he saw no options but moving on. He nodded, opened the door, and allowed her to pass first. Then he closed the door behind him with a silent request that nothing strange would happen there again.

 **Author's Note:** One more chapter to go. I'm hoping to have it up within a week. Thanks for reading and reviewing! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!


	4. Respect for the Dead

**Respect for the Dead**

They reached the graveyard at midnight. It was silent, still, and nearly pitch dark in the overcast night. Izzy squinted to avoid tripping over headstones and uneven ground, clinging to Amy's hand in case she should stumble.

Tai led the way to that familiar monument, where TK and Davis waited. They were lighting candles and placing them on the base of the monument. Izzy nodded in greeting and took a seat on the ground. Amy inspected the towering statue, tipping her head back to view the veiled figure.

"It's so frightening," she muttered. "I would have thought you'd chose an angel or something."

TK stood by her side and rested a hand on her shoulder. "I tried to look up an explanation. No luck. Do you think it's symbolic? Like, we're blind to when death will come for us?"

"It could be," Matt said. "There _are_ two kids buried there."

Amy spun around, knocking into TK. "Kids?" she echoed. " _Two?_ " She knelt by the inscription and squinted. "Hand me the lantern, Tai."

"I thought that broke," Davis said. Tai shrugged.

"Weird, right? I thought the bulb had blown, but it turned right on." Tai passed Amy the electronic lantern, and she held it by the inscription.

"You're right..." Her fingers trailed over the letters, drinking in the story as much as her eyes. "The birth and death dates are identical... Elijah and Lydia Liny."

Izzy's glance flicked to the grass. Details of his dreams filled his mind, the entwined voices of opposite sexes, their childish cadences... He ignored the tremor that danced down his spine. _It would seem that I'm just as open to suggestibility as anyone else. I invented those voices because I knew children are buried here._

TK slung an arm around Amy's shoulders. "Are you okay? You don't have to do this. Matt told me you had a rough night. I can walk you home if you're scared."

Izzy looked up in time to see Matt's head whip towards TK. He suspected that they were thinking the same thing: _When does TK ever offer to walk away from something interesting?_

"We need her, though," Davis pointed out. "She's the only one who knows the rules."

"You don't want to be here," Matt said. It wasn't a question, and Amy didn't bother confirming.

"I know this all sounds kind of out there, but I'll feel better if we try to apologize. If there's any chance that it can help, then..."

Tai frowned as he plopped onto the ground. "Fine. You're in charge, but if things get weird again, TK will get you out of here. Deal?"

Amy produced a wobbly smile and sat beside him. A faint twinge dug at Izzy's chest. When had she reverted to preferring Tai for support?

"It's a ouija board," she said. "Things are going to get weird. Now..." She gestured towards TK, and he handed over the lighter he had used to set the candles aglow. Izzy watched with confusion as she pulled a few green leaves from her pocket.

"Is that sage?" Matt asked. Amy nodded.

"Where'd ya get that?" Davis leaned closer to her as she flicked the lighter and set a leaf on fire.

"Kitchen," Amy replied. "Mimi grows some spice plants for us. Sage for burning is probably supposed to be dried out, but this is what I had."

A toothy smile split Davis's face. "So are you, like... Setting the mood?"

"Get serious," Matt sighed. "This is why we had problems last time."

"It's supposed to have a purifying effect." The smoke rose in strings of twisting vapors, until it slipped beyond the light of the lantern. Izzy bit his lip as he watched it move.

 _It's a plant. Useful as a spice, but as mystic as the dead grass I'm sitting on. You've taken botany classes. You're more familiar with the natural world than I am!_ His hands fisted in the grass, and the withered blades rustled and crumbled between his fingers.

"This is cool," Davis said, falling onto his back to watch the smoke. "Much more official than last time."

"Excuse me," Tai muttered.

Matt grinned as he unboxed the board. "The point is to be respectful this time. Amy's going to be the speaker. Everyone else shut it."

Amy jerked so hard that she nearly dropped the burning sage. "I, I- What?"

"Alright," TK said. "You know the most about it. I'll work the planchette with you."

"I'll do it." Matt sat beside Amy and unfolded the board. "You're not touching this thing."

The tension in Izzy's body began to melt away. If Amy and Matt were using the board, then he needn't fear any shenanigans. There was a chance that the planchette wouldn't move at all, save for natural, meaningless nudges from incremental body shifting.

Amy stared down at the board and bit her lower lip. "I'm not sure about this..."

Izzy hastened to intervene. "I think it's the best choice. The two of you seem to respect this more than the rest of us."

Matt nodded. "If you really want to have a positive conversation with whatever we pissed off last time, it has to be us."

"Hey!" Davis cried. "That wasn't our fault! Izzy made it mad."

Amy ignored him and trailed her fingertips over the white face of the planchette. "Did you bring what I asked, Matt?"

"Of course." He slid a ring off his finger and gave it to Amy. She rested it between the sun and the moon printed on the board.

"You're supposed to place a silver coin on the board," she explained. "A coin _made_ of silver, I should specify. This is the closest thing I could find."

Tai chuckled. "No wonder we messed up last time. We forgot the bling."

TK laughed, but Izzy's eyes narrowed. What other talismans would Amy produce? Did she really believe any of this would help, or was she simply following directions, as if this were an experiment?

"Can we start now?" Davis's foot tapped against the earth. Amy turned to him and smiled.

"Almost. How should we sit?" Matt faced her and showed her how to use their touching knees as a surface for the board. Amy stared at it for a long moment, her face pale and pinched.

"Turn off the lantern," she murmured. "We'll have to read it by candle light."

 _Let me guess. Ghosts are afraid of light._ Thankfully, no one challenged her, and Izzy was spared the explanation. TK turned the lantern off, and darkness rushed up to meet them.

The silence of the graveyard rang more clearly in the dark. Unlike Halloween night, there was no distant shouting, no bass line pounding in his bones. Even the insects were quiet, stilled by the creeping chill of winter. Shuddering, he zipped his coat up to his chin and hunched over, hugging his body for warmth. He wished Amy had sat next to him, as was her habit. The warmth would be welcome.

Izzy squinted, but he could not read the board in the darkness. Tai, Davis, and TK scooted closer, and Izzy followed, until they formed a tight circle around Matt and Amy. Their faces were vague in the darkness, creating faint impressions of gleaming eyes and half-formed expressions. The full moon and the stars were obscured by dark clouds. The tiny flames from the candles glowed like beacons in the night, and everything untouched by them was lost.

Amy drew a shaky breath, sat up straighter, and said, "I'm going to say a quick blessing. It's, it's just a paraphrase of something I found on the internet-"

"Go ahead." Half of Matt's face smiled reassuringly. The other was nothing but an obscure curve, smothered by darkness.

"O-okay. Um... We invite any good spirits to converse with us, if you'd like. Our purpose is to speak with you; we mean no disrespect. If our presence is a trespass, please forgive us."

Izzy felt each of his facial muscles freeze in separate stages. Color flooded his face, and his eyes roved about, looking anywhere but at Amy. Something tensed and shrank in his stomach, tightening to a dangerous degree. Her sweet, lilting voice rose from the darkness, offered to nothing but air, earth, and the black sky.

 _What's wrong with me?_ Izzy's folded arms pressed in against his stomach, trying to still its squirming. _When Tai and Davis started this farce, I was annoyed, but not upset._ He forced himself to look at his girlfriend. She was bent forward, and her long hair curtained her face and grazed the board.

"No spirits or creatures of evil intent are welcome within the purified area around us."

Grimacing, Izzy looked away. _Purification, spirits... It's embarrassing to hear this from such a sharp mind._

And when those words flit through his brain, he finally recognized the truth: for the first time, he was ashamed of Amy, and embarrassed by association. Color flooded his cheeks, heating icy skin. He was torn between disbelief of her behavior and disbelief of his reaction. For once, it seemed impossible to remove his feelings from the situation and act as a disinterested observer, and he struggled to pull himself out of his head and into the seance.

Amy placed each of her pointer fingers on her edge of the planchette, and Matt followed suit. They began to warm the board, moving the planchette intentionally. "So... Are there any benevolent spirits who would like to talk? We're especially interested in reaching out to the spirit my friends contacted on Halloween. We'd like to apologize."

"You're assuming that our spirit is benevolent," TK whispered.

"TK," Matt and Tai hissed in unison. "One speaker!"

"Is it moving?" Davis inched closer, until his nose practically prodded TK. "I can't see!"

Matt tsked, collected Amy's hair with his free hand, and tossed it over her shoulder, clearing Davis's view. "Now be quiet."

The group settled into silence at last. The planchette moved in slow, steady arcs, sweeping over letters and numbers. The orderly movement made it clear that Amy and Matt were in control.

Amy licked her lips. "Er- Lydia?" she said hesitantly. "Elijah? Are you there?"

Izzy opened his mouth to protest, but TK nudged him with his elbow. _Perhaps he's right. There's no need to argue about the ghost's supposed identity if nothing happens._ Time passed with no change, and he was just beginning to relax when the planchette darted to the top left, landing on the sun. The word _yes_ peeked through the round window. Izzy dropped his face into his palm, but remained silent.

"O-oh!" Amy stared at Matt, eyes wide and questioning. He shook his head, and she swallowed so hard that Izzy heard the liquid slosh down her throat. "Hello. Are you two the spirits that my friends contacted last time?"

The planchette slide down, then back up, landing on the sun again. "Awesome!" Davis whispered. This time, Tai delivered an elbow jab. Judging by Davis's responding grunt, it was much rougher than TK's.

"Um, hi. Thanks for responding. My friends came to apologize for what happened the last time we contacted you."

The planchette raced over the alphabet. "Hello again, Amy," TK read. The group gasped as one, including Izzy. The embarrassed warmth drained from his cheeks in an instant.

 _No. No, neither of them would joke about an attack on her. So why...? Are they subconsciously blaming the ghosts for Amy's night terrors?_ The explanation seemed plausible, and yet his pulse worked loud and fast, drumming in his head, rattling his skull. His hand flicked towards Amy, but Tai was in between them.

"I already don't like this," the athlete muttered.

 _Join the club._ Izzy stared at Amy, anxious about her next move. Her fingers shook against the planchette.

"Y-yes, hello. That dream frightened me very much. Have you been visiting us at home as revenge for what happened on Halloween?"

The planchette slid ponderously over the board, circling this way and that in motions that seemed to convey hesitance. At last, it jerked towards yes. "Is there another reason?" Amy asked.

This time, the pointer flew decisively across the board. TK's eyes darted as they followed the movement, flashing silver in the faint moonlight. "Fun," he read. "Play."

" _What?!_ " Tai's fists slammed into his knees. "Playing?! What happened to Amy wasn't a game!"

"Tai, please," Amy said. "Don't shout." She turned back to the board in stiff, jarring stages. "I'm, I'm afraid it wasn't as fun for us."

Izzy's fists tightened until his nails threatened to split skin. An image of Amy thrashing on the bed filled his mind, accompanied by her keening screams. His breathing turned shallow and ragged. The impulse to intervene was growing with each second, but what could he do? Amy was convinced that she needed to pacify the ghosts, no matter how much it frightened her.

As he argued with himself, the planchette paused. Finally, it began to shift with slow deliberateness. "Fun play," TK read. "Lonely."

Izzy frowned, but Amy's expression slowly softened. She made protracted eye contact with Matt, and Izzy couldn't follow whatever passed between them.

"This is a family monument," the bassist pointed out. "But there's a large gap between the twins' birth date and the birth date of the previous family member listed."

Amy turned to the monument, checking the inscription. "Are your parents buried with you?"

Her body jerked forward as the planchette dove towards Matt's end of the board, landing on the moon and _no_. It circled the word over and over again, orbiting it like a satellite.

"Okay," Amy gasped. "No. I understand. Are there other children where you are?"

The planchette came to a total stop. Davis shuddered, rubbing his arms, and Izzy realized that the temperature was suddenly dropping. He exhaled, and it was momentarily visible as steam.

Amy waited for a few moments, then said, "It's okay. We don't have to talk about this. Let me get to the point. My understanding is that Izzy upset you, and that the last seance was somewhat… disrespectful. As a result, you've been active in our lives lately. We'd like to apologize and ask you to return to where you came from."

The planchette dove back to _no_ , then began to spell again. "It keeps saying 'lonely' and 'invited,'" TK reported.

"Shit." Davis shifted guiltily. "That was me, right?"

Tai frowned. "I don't understand. I thought the ghosts were mad about Izzy saying they aren't real. Now they're acting like they're lonely. Which is it?"

"Let's assume they _are_ children," Amy said gently. "Maybe they were purely angry at first, but started to have fun somewhere along the line? Think about it. For argument's sake, imagine that you're a ghost. For some reason, you're marooned on earth, but not part of this world anymore."

TK nodded, drinking in the story, but Izzy was fighting his desire to pull the conversation back to reality. Why was Amy weaving a tale for them? It was nothing but conjecture based on a grave inscription, occult lore, and a few circumstances caused by psychological stress. _Would you relax? Let her have her say. You're supposed to support her._ Even so, he felt a strong desire to stop her now, before she talked herself into a mentally vulnerable state that could induce more night terrors. He ignored the followup thought, which pointed out that these ouija board replies were growing _far_ too disturbing for comfort.

"You spend over a century like that, just sort of… wandering around, invisible, unseen, alone," Amy continued. "Then, one day, a group of people sit around your grave and start talking to you. At first, you're so happy that someone came to contact you. But you slowly realize that they're playing a game at your expense. For some of them, you're just a source of entertainment. Another provokes you to prove that you're real, after you've spent so long wishing you could interact with a world beyond your reach. Finally, another says that you aren't real at all. And it hurts, because you're being taunted for everything that you lost so early in your life."

"So you retaliate," TK finished. Amy nodded.

"Without knowing it, the living invited you to their world, so you wreck havoc. At first, it's all revenge, but then you realize that it's fun to be around people again, to be acknowledged in some way."

"Tai, look!" Davis hissed. He pointed to the board, and Izzy's gaze jerked from Amy to the planchette. It was circling around _yes_. Amy and Matt looked down in unison and twitched. Amy produced a soft, nervous laugh.

"Are you saying that they won't want to back off?" Tai asked. Amy nibbled her lower lip.

"That's what I'm afraid of. But they seem fairly friendly towards us now… Maybe we can come to an agreement?"

 _Excellent. We're bartering with ghosts._ Despite the outlandishness of the suggestion, Izzy's spirits rose. If Amy convinced herself that she had worked things out with the ghost, perhaps she'd relax, along with everyone else. At this point, he was willing to go along with almost anything to end this episode of supernatural paranoia. _Or to leave this damned graveyard._ He rubbed his hands together for warmth, wondering why the temperature was diving so quickly. Without willing it, he glanced this way and that, half expecting pale, glowing faces to materialize. His feet jiggled against the ground, longing to move away from here.

"Alright. Lydia, Elijah. I have an offer for you. I know you were upset, and that it was fun, but some of the things you did were harmful to us. So if we apologize to you and promise to visit you sometimes, will you go back to where you came from?"

The planchette trailed over the board sluggishly, then halted. Amy cleared her throat. "Um, maybe we should start with the apologies." She looked out at the group with wide eyes, obviously hoping for support, but Izzy had no idea what to say.

Matt leaned over the board and sighed. "I'm sorry we used your resting place as a site for a game."

Davis grinned sheepishly. "This feels kinda weird, but I'm sorry I taunted you."

There was a long pause, and Tai turned to Izzy and cleared his throat. _They're just words,_ he told himself. _Give Amy what she needs, and then this will be over._ "I apologize for implying that you don't exist," he said, fighting for a normal tone.

Naturally, the planchette chose that moment to start moving. TK's lips twitched into a smile as he read, "Lies. Mean Isaac."

Izzy jerked back. Amy wouldn't take a jab at him, even subconsciously, he was sure. _So what- Is that Matt? But then Amy would feel him moving the planchette…_

"S-sorry!" Amy gasped. At first, Izzy thought she was addressing the board, but she was looking at him for the first time since the seance started, eyes wide and round.

Although he was annoyed by Davis and Tai's laughter, confused by the board's messages, and growing more uncomfortable with each second, Izzy automatically rose to a debate. "It isn't a lie. It would have been a lie to say that I was sorry, but it isn't a falsehood to apologize for my action."

"Huh?" Davis tipped his head and scowled. "What the hell is the difference?"

TK's grin widened. "Apologizing is requesting someone's forgiveness for doing something wrong. Saying you're sorry isn't a request for forgiveness; it's an indication of regret or pity."

"Why are we arguing semantics with a pair of ten-year-old ghosts?" Matt snapped. "Izzy, just… Try a more sincere approach?"

"Remember, we are real," TK said. The breath vanished from Izzy's lungs, leaving him struggling for air. The twined voices from his dream whispered through his mind, and his head jerked from Matt to his brother.

" _W-what?_ " he gasped. TK pointed to the board. Sure enough, it was flying across the board, spelling the phrase out repeatedly.

 _Shit. Shit. Shit!_ The tightness that had plagued Izzy's stomach during the seance rushed upward, burning in his chest and throat. He retched and swallowed a mouthful of sour stomach acid. His trembling from the cold progressed to shaking, and he seized Tai's arm for purchase. The sing-song voices from his dreams filled his brain, bouncing off his skull as if it were an acoustics chamber.

Amy watched the darting planchette with a dazed expression. Finally, she gave herself a shake, as she often did when exiting a daydream. She gave a low moan and jerked her hands off of the planchette.

"Amy?" Tai slid closer and gripped her shoulder. Izzy watched her hands shake with the force of palsy. The soft gleam of candlelight glowed against the moisture in her eyes. Her face was an eloquent portrait of horror, eyes wide, lips drawn back, eyebrows crowding together. Izzy reached for her, but nearly toppled as Tai moved towards her.

"I'm s-sorry," she choked. "I heard those same words in the dream I had last night, and I, I, I'm _scared_."

"It's okay," Tai said soothingly. "You can do this. Hang in there." Then he whipped around and fixed Izzy with an expression that could probably make a bear cower and flee. Izzy froze. Just when he was beginning to fear the ghosts, Tai presented him with a much more immediate danger.

" _Get talking_ ," he hissed. Izzy stared at him, bemused. The athlete's lips curled back, displaying his teeth. His proud shock of wild hair reminded Izzy of a lion, along with the glitter of golden flecks against brown irises.

But while Tai's predatory appearance was arresting, Izzy's attention was needed elsewhere. He turned to Amy, despite feeling somewhat wary of leaving an opening for Tai. Matt was trying to calm her, gently leading her hand back to the planchette. Izzy watched her trembling fingers land on the plastic. She whimpered when it lurched back into motion, repeating that loaded phrase.

And a glance at her chalky, drawn face and streaming eyes cleared the last of his doubt away. _She isn't doing this, not on purpose, and neither is Matt. It's still technically possible that it's happening unconsciously, but that doesn't matter. Regardless of whether or not the ghost is real, Amy is afraid, and as Joe pointed out, that fear is the true issue. I have to bring this to an end and get her out of here._

And suddenly, the words couldn't come out fast enough. "I'm sorry," Izzy said, shifting closer to the board. "I allowed my certainty in my world view to cloud my objectivity. While I still have trouble accepting the existence of beings beyond the physical world, there was no need to challenge or look down on others because of their beliefs. The truth is that I can't say with certainty what may or may not exist on some other plane. I apologize."

The planchette slowed to a halt. Amy's eyes still streamed, but a faint hint of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. Izzy's hands twitched towards her, but he was too aware of everyone watching him to touch her. His brain raced, searching for some way to comfort her and make amends for his behavior. Naturally, nothing came to mind, except to offer an encouraging smile.

"Amy?" Matt whispered. She turned to him and nodded.

"T-thanks for your time. I'll come visit you sometimes, so… Would you please say goodbye and leave us?"

There was a long pause before the pointer sank down, landing on _goodbye_. Izzy held his breath as the moment stretched on, half expecting it to move again, but it remained in place. "Goodbye," Amy murmured. She exhaled slowly, then let go of the planchette and inched back from the board. Matt immediately folded it up and packed it away, as if he feared that the game would somehow restart otherwise.

Izzy rose, then staggered. His butt and thighs were frozen and asleep. Judging from the smattering of cursing that sounded as everyone stood, the ailment was not limited to him. Tai turned the lantern on, and TK and Davis blew out the candles and collected everything from the monument.

The group was silent until they stepped out of the graveyard. Then, as if the black picket fence were a barrier warding off spirits, Davis smacked his cheeks and cried, "I am never touching a ouija board again. That shit was _way_ too weird."

Matt grunted agreement as TK grinned. "Izzy, are you still certain that ghosts don't exist, even after that?"

"Hmm…" Although he was tempted to automatically agree, partially just to cause a reaction, Izzy paused to consider his answer. While the actions of the planchette formed a convincing narrative, they were controlled by Amy. Everything that the board dictated fit in with her interpretation of their situation. While Izzy trusted her to handle the board honestly, there was no way to turn off her subconscious processes.

"I suppose it's within the realm of possibility," he said at last. "But I am not a proponent of the theory." There was no need to point out that his trembling wasn't caused solely by the cold. _After all, fear is often irrational. Just because I feared the ghosts during the end of the seance doesn't mean that I believe they exist._ He could almost hear Ryo Hiraki, the psychologist-in-training connected to their group via Hana, forming a counter argument that Izzy ignored just as staunchly in his mind as he would in person.

Tai stopped so suddenly that Izzy nearly crashed into him. "What- _seriously_? After all of that? Dude, do you need the ghosts to appear in front of you and moon you before you believe in them?!"

The others laughed, and even Izzy cracked a tiny smile. "If that occurred, I believe my first stop would be a psychologist. But I suppose an apparition could potentially be convincing."

Tai stared at him, then shook his head and flapped his hand. "No. Forget it. I'm done with you. I'm done with this. We're going to go home, go to bed, and just hope that no other shitty things happen."

"How do you feel, Amy?" TK asked. Izzy stepped away from Tai and matched his pace to Amy's. When he touched her hand, she automatically took hold of his arm.

Her eyes slid up, staring at the overcast sky. "I… I guess I'm alright," she said at last. But here face was still wet from her tears, and Izzy felt her quivering. "Honestly? Even if the ghosts really did cause all of those problems, I still feel a little bad about asking them to leave. It must be so lonely… I wonder why they can't find heaven? If there really are ghosts, why are some spirits stuck here, while most of them go to heaven, hell, or purgatory? Are all of the ghosts you contact with ouija boards stuck in limbo, or _can_ you contact people in heaven? And this is all assuming that heaven is real!" She sighed and moved closer to Izzy, shuddering into his side. "Every question I ask about spiritual stuff explodes into more questions.

TK patted her back. "As always, you're over-thinking. Don't worry about it so much! You were really cool back there, you know."

"Yeah!" Davis glanced at them over his shoulder and grinned. "You were like… Like a priestess in a horror movie! You know how they say some weird stuff and send the ghost back?"

Amy stiffened. "I'm not- I don't know anything. I was just trying to be respectful about it."

"Yeah," Matt said. "I don't think we'll have any more problems, so there's no need to worry about it."

Izzy caught his girlfriend's eye and nodded. The important thing was to encourage Amy to relax, so she wouldn't be afraid tonight. She managed a tiny grin. "Well, hopefully that's the end of this. Boy, it sure is cold tonight!"

Matt and Izzy embraced the new topic and encouraged innocuous subjects for the rest of the walk home.

 **A Little Later**

Their house mates pounced on them as they entered the foyer, eager to hear about the seance. As the mass of people moved to the living room, Izzy edged towards the stairs, taking Amy with him. They snuck up the steps and slipped into their bedroom, closing the door behind them.

Amy collapsed on the bed and buried her face in her pillow. "I'm _so_ tired," she groaned.

"Please don't fall asleep like that." Izzy grinned as he opened the closet. "You know how difficult it is to wake you once you pass out."

He extracted her fluffy winter robe and dropped it on the bed. Amy sighed and lurched into a sitting position, then lifted her arms as he approached. Izzy hooked his fingers beneath the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head. Her hair plopped against her skin in a tousled pile. His eyes followed the dark strands down to her breasts, shaped and supported by a red bra.

He didn't realize that he was staring until Amy began to speak. His eyes leaped up, landing on hers. "I'm really sorry about all of this. The seance, I mean. It was my idea, and I know you don't like… I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just, I was afraid, so… Well, I'm sorry."

"Amy…" Izzy sat down beside her and slipped his fingers through her hair, moving it away from her face. "I'm the one who owes you an apology. Since you displayed an interest in the occult last night, I've been…" He paused and slid closer, searching for words that wouldn't hurt her.

Amy shivered, and goosebumps rippled across her skin. "Ah! Forgive me. You're cold." He draped the robe over her shoulders and reached behind her, unhooking her bra. She removed it while he worked the zipper on her skirt and inched it down over her hips, along with the thick tights beneath it. Soon, she was huddled into her robe, and he stood to change into sweatpants and a thermal undershirt.

Izzy dropped their clothing into the hamper and joined Amy under the covers. She closed her eyes and placed her head on his shoulder. "You know I admire your intellect," he began.

Her lips curved into a smile. "I still don't understand why you say things like that. My brain has nothing on yours."

"There is no one way to rate the caliber of a mind. I've established that I admire yours." He flicked his hand, swatting the objection away. "When you displayed an interest in the occult, I felt… I was confused. Embarrassed. Almost betrayed."

Her eyes slid open. "I could tell that you weren't happy."

"I was being foolish." He kissed the top of her head and sighed. "There's no reason why you can't have an interest in the occult and still be rational and intelligent. And who am I to say with certainty what does and does not exist beyond my perception?"

She was quiet for a long time. "Izzy... What do you _really_ think of everything that happened? I know it sounds crazy, and a few of the things have possible explanations, but the dreams and the ouija board itself..."

She huddled close to him. Izzy smiled wryly, amused by her ability to sense that he had stretched the truth to spare his pride in front of the boys. He hesitated, torn between the desire to soothe her and his reluctance to lie to her. "I... I don't know," he said at last. "You're aware that I was thoroughly unimpressed at first. But... While there still is a chance that nothing unnatural took place, the evidence of a supernatural influence has grown too strong to disregard."

Her fingers curled in the weave of his shirt. "What convinced you?"

"I wouldn't say convinced. _Wary_ is a better word. Frankly, I don't trust Tai and Davis to handle a ouija board honestly, but there were elements in the first seance that didn't fit in with their personalities. But then, TK could have written their script, so I disregarded it initially."

He paused and bit his lip, holding back treacherous words. Sighing, he folded Amy against him and ran his fingertips over silky hair and soft fleece. "But you and Matt wouldn't play that sort of game. It's possible that you subconsciously controlled the board, but could that occur with such precision? And furthermore..."

He swallowed hard, fighting to wet a throat gone bone dry. Amy cupped his cheeks with her palms and looked into his eyes, probably reading far more than he'd like.

"Your night terrors," he whispered. "Amy, it was awful. And while Joe provided a perfectly plausible explanation, I..." He looked away, unable to stand the concern in her eyes. They were still just a bit bloodshot.

"There's something I didn't tell you. I was trying to avoid frightening you, but perhaps I should have been more open. You had dreams about watching me be buried alive. On those same nights, I had dreams about _being_ buried alive, and the details all fit in perfectly with what you described. In fact, they seem to form a cohesive story."

She flinched so hard that her forehead crashed into his chin. "W-what? The voice- The two voices in one-"

"Yes. And the disc of light with simple features, along with the mantra of 'We are real.'"

Her grip tightened, cinching his waist like a belt. "W-what? What do you mean?"

He took a deep breath, stealing himself for his task. Then he told her everything, save for one detail. The omission weighed on his conscience, but he couldn't bring himself to repeat the spirit's threat against her, real or not.

Regardless, what he said was sufficient to make her tremble in his arms. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I wanted to avoid frightening you..."

She shook her head. "It's all just dreams... Or at least, that's what I want to say. But it's so uncanny. But- But-"

Amy drew back enough to hold her palms in front of her. Staring into one, she said, "I can't prove it's just a dream." Turning towards the other, she continued, "I can't prove it's a ghost. It's too strange for comfort, but too outlandish to believe. Where does that leave me?"

Somehow, Izzy couldn't help smiling. He gathered her hands in his and lifted them briefly to his lips. "Bloody confused."

She groaned and fell back on her pillow. "I don't understand anything anymore."

"I imagine this puzzle will nag at us for some time to come. However, I trust that some aspects of it will soon be explained."

Her lids fluttered over deep brown eyes. "What do you mean?"

He fought to smother a wry smile. "It's just conjecture. I'd prefer not to say more, but I doubt we'll have to wait long."

She scowled, eyes narrowing. "You suspect something. Someone, rather."

His treacherous smile grew as he waved a hand. "I would hate to make a false accusation."

Whatever comment she wanted to respond with was overrun by a huge yawn. They glanced towards the digital clock on her nightstand. It was nearly two in the morning.

Amy smacked her forehead. "Ugh. Thank goodness I don't have an early class tomorrow..."

"Regardless, we should sleep." Although he often went to bed around this time, Amy usually passed out between eleven and midnight. She tried to object, but was interrupted by a second yawn that leaped to him, then back to her.

"Fine." Sighing, she rose and disappeared into the bathroom. Izzy surfed the internet on his phone until she slipped back under the covers, smelling faintly of toothpaste.

Just before he rose to use the restroom, Amy wiggled over, squishing their sides together. "Izzy... Do you think the kids will leave us alone now?"

Although her expression and voice were controlled, her hand was cold and shaking. He smiled reassuringly, willing his own uncertainties to quiet. "We achieved what we set out to accomplish, correct? The ghosts said goodbye. Everything will be alright."

"Mm." She inhaled slowly and closed her eyes. Izzy held her until her breathing went deep and even. Then he stood, pulled the covers up to her chin, and kissed her cheek. She murmured good night, already more asleep than awake. Izzy watched her for a moment, dearly hoping that his words would prove true.

He turned off the bedroom light and slipped into the bathroom. He closed the door and groped for the light switch, unwilling to disturb Amy with the illumination. Just before his hand hit the panel, he noticed a small pinprick of light on the mirror above the sink.

Dread filled him, sinking in his stomach like a stone. He wanted to run, but his legs had already buckled, leaving him dependent on the wall for support. He watched, transfixed, as the bead of light expanded to the size of a small face.

It smiled, winked, and shrank away, receding to the size of a firefly before blinking out. Vertigo slammed into Izzy, rushing up his veins and slamming every receptor, lighting up neurons and flooding every synapse in between. He was painfully aware that he was neither drunk nor dreaming. A nervous, tinny laugh bubbled up his throat, fizzing like carbonation on his tongue.

His legs were weak and tingly, but as soon as they responded, he backed out of the bathroom and closed the door. The bed swayed beneath him as he fell onto it, but Amy didn't stir. Izzy leaned forward and cradled his face in his hands. Over the last few days, hairline cracks had formed in his world view, a previously imperturbable fortress of logic and rationality. He was helpless to intervene as a chink fell out here, as a piece shifted there, and as the whole conceit was sealed into its altered form.

At least ten minutes passed as he sat there, head burning with feverish pain, heart pounding its way to an explosion. Half numb, he fished his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts. He selected a name and hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen.

 _If I'm to go mad, then I'd best avoid half measures._ Izzy grimaced, typed a message, and hit send.

 _Ryo?_

The answer appeared seconds later, announced with a chirp that made Amy murmur. _Izzy. To what do I owe the pleasure?_

Izzy typed his reply and stared at the characters on his screen. He didn't want to believe them, just as he didn't want to believe his sense organs and memory. But willful self-delusion was not an option for a man of information. He hissed through his teeth and hit send.

 _I just saw a ghost._

This pause was perceptibly longer than the first. _I'll pencil you in for Wednesday._

 _Much obliged._

Izzy groaned, rubbed his throbbing temples, and retreated to bed. Amy's body was like a firebrand against his icy skin, but he wrapped himself around her, regardless.

 _You're not necessarily out there. The apparition could be a failure on the part of my sense organs, fatigued and over-excited by recent events. However... If you can hear me, Elijah and Lydia, I ask that you do no harm to her._

The wind moaned through the trees outside, underscored by what sounded like the giggling of children. Izzy shivered, squished himself even closer to Amy, and tried to sleep.

 **Hours Later**

Izzy's phone alarm chirped a few minutes earlier than usual. He awoke with a start and plunged his hands beneath the pillow, muting the noise as quickly as possible. Amy shifted beside him, and Izzy froze until he was sure that she was still sleeping.

Then he inched off the bed and shuddered in the morning chill. Pale gray light filtered through the blinds, filling the room with a soft haze. He grabbed the blanket folded over the back of Amy's desk chair and threw it over his shoulders, swallowing a curse as his bare feet hit the icy hardwood floor.

He was about to retreat to the rug when he noticed objects left out on Amy's desk. His heart froze, then lurched into sudden motion, like a launch roller coaster. Amy kept their room meticulously clean, with a place for everything and everything in its place. He had already located what he had half-expected to find: signs of continued haunting.

Izzy glanced back at the bed and found that Amy was still unconscious. Relief washed over him, easing his heart rate closer to normal. Objects out of place didn't frighten him, but the reactions of his house mates were another matter. If no one else saw the evidence, he could remove it if necessary. He returned to the bed long enough to cram his frozen feet into slippers, then leaned over Amy's desk.

The surface was covered with items laid out like an offering. He found tubes of lipstick, pencils, a clear hunk of quartz, and the tower card from Amy's tarot deck. The planchette sat atop a pile of papers, holding them in place. Izzy flipped through them and found what looked like notes from their first seance, one of Sora's fashion drawings, an instruction sheet describing how to use stink bombs, and a folded-over note addressed to Amy.

Curiosity consumed Izzy so completely that he barely felt the twinge of guilt as he opened the note. His eyes scorched over it like a flame, consuming the message that could finally answer his lingering questions. They were left almost as parched and dry as the paper.

 _Sorry_ , it read.

Izzy squinted, as if the message would grow longer with higher resolution. He forced himself to think through his sinking disappointment, to assemble the evidence. The paper was unlined and distressed, but its weight and grain were familiar. Izzy reached for his printer and extracted a sheet of paper. The note was smaller, shriveled in in spots, but the two surfaces felt similar to the touch.

The color of the stains seemed familiar, too. Izzy lifted the paper and sniffed it cautiously. Sure enough, the scent of tea flooded his senses. And not just any tea; this was the honey pear brew that Sora always requested on the household grocery list.

 _But Sora? Doubtful_. Izzy was fairly certain that he understood everything, but he needed to show Amy the note to confirm his theory.

He sat beside her on the bed and trailed his fingertips down her cheek. She sighed, but didn't stir. Smiling, Izzy called her name and kissed her cheek.

"Mm?" She blinked up at him a few times before the recognition hit. A slow smile spread across her face.

"Good morning," Izzy said softly. "It would seem that our friendly ghost paid us a visit last night. You must have reminded him of his manners; he left a calling card."

The haziness of waking snapped out of her eyes in an instant. Izzy grinned and squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Don't be alarmed. He's quite contrite."

"Ghost?" she echoed weakly. Her robe slid down as she struggled into a sitting position, revealing a round shoulder. "Calling card? Izzy, I'm, I'm not even awake."

Izzy ignored the temptation to peel the robe further back. "Apologies," he said. "I assumed you'd like to see the message right away."

He handed her the note, folded over so her name faced her. Amy glanced at it and frowned. "Izzy, that's not... TK wrote that."

 _Aha! As I suspected!_ Izzy wasn't sure if he should laugh or groan, and he landed on a slightly manic smile. "You're sure? It's very important that you be sure."

Amy took the note, opened it, and stared at the short message. "I'm sure," she said at last. "I mean, you can ask Matt if you want."

"That's not necessary. I believe you."

"Why did you say that the ghost wrote this?"

"Wait just a moment." Izzy rose, collected the items on Amy's side of the desk, and returned to the bed. "The note was left on your desk, along with these offerings."

He dropped them onto her lap in a slow cascade, smiling in response to her astonishment. She gaped at the collection for a moment, then seized the clear crystal for inspection.

"This is my quartz!" she cried. "And Mimi's makeup, TK's pencils... Izzy, this is all stuff that the ghost stole!"

The moment when everything clicked was plain indeed. Her brows flew up, then knit together. Pink lips slacked into an 'o' shape, then pulled back with a snarl.

"TK, you rat bastard!" She flipped through the papers, extracting the stink bomb instructions. "Zeus above, this explains everything! The smell in the basement was stink bombs!"

"And obviously, TK pilfered some of our possessions and changed the order of your tarot cards." Despite his annoyance, Izzy couldn't stop grinning. "TK has a key to our home. He must have been sneaking around at night. In fact... He was probably hiding in the closet when I heard the piano playing."

Amy smacked her forehead. "Stars. You know he was probably smothering hysterics while we all freaked out in the living room."

"Indubitably," Izzy drawled. "And once we were all collected in one place, he slipped out of the closet and left the house... And he failed to close the door behind him."

"Huh. _Huh._ " Amy crossed her arms and stared at the pile of stolen goods. "This does account for most of it, but..."

"Yes," Izzy said, nodding. "There are gaps. I'd like to contact him as soon as possible. Do you have an idea of when he might wake?"

Amy's eyes averted as she considered. Suddenly, her brow snapped down, and her lips thinned into a harsh line. "No need," she said, brushing TK's plunder aside.

"Beg pardon?" Izzy rose with her and watched as she removed her robe, put on sweatpants and a shirt, and wrapped the robe on top.

"Just wait." She slid her feet into slippers and stepped towards the hall.

"Amy?" Izzy grabbed his robe and hastily wrapped it around himself as he followed her down the hall and the stairs. She peeked into the living room, then stepped towards the kitchen.

TK sat at the far end of the table, eyes lowered as he sipped from a dainty tea cup. Kari sat on his right, smiling apologetically. The table was set for four and prepared with a box of donuts, another of bagels, a steaming teapot, and a pitcher of orange juice.

Izzy and Amy froze, standing in stunned silence. "I knew I'd find you here," Amy said at last. "So... Why am I surprised?"

TK grinned and gestured towards the two empty chairs on his left. "Good morning. Have a seat. I got your favorites, Amy."

 _Ah. I believe I see where this is going._ Izzy nudged Amy past the couch, and she followed him robotically to the table. TK and Kari had set it with the finest dishes in the house, stacking a white salad plate on top of a larger service plate in blush pink. Izzy spared a moment to wonder where the fabric napkins, also pink, had come from, then dismissed the question. TK pushed the boxes of food towards them, but neither of them moved to inspect the offerings.

"TK," Amy sighed. "What the hell. And all the variants thereof."

TK cleared his throat and reached into the donut box. "Look, Amy. White frosting and rainbow sprinkles! Your favorite!"

She folded her hands neatly on the table. "And what do donuts have to do with anything, Casper?" Kari and Izzy snorted in unison. TK grimaced, dropped the donut on her plate, and eased back into his chair. He made a show of unfolding his napkin and spreading it over his lap.

"Er… T-tea?" He picked up the teapot, then licked his lips and lowered it. "No, you don't take tea. Uh, Izzy?"

 _Oh, now this is interesting._ "Please," he replied, pushing his saucer towards the blond. TK poured him a cup, and the dark stream wobbled, nearly spilling over the lip.

 _His hands are shaking… I've never seen him less than infuriatingly composed._ Izzy glanced at Amy and found that her hand was inching down the table, moving towards TK. Kari's eyes moved over the party, her expression distant and sharp.

TK slid the saucer back to Izzy and smiled, but none of the usual mischief lit his eyes. "So, ah. There's no use skirting around it, I suppose. I'm the ghost. And I'm…"

Kari leaned towards him, and Izzy guessed that they were holding hands beneath the table. Liquid rose to TK's eyes, but he was still smiling stiffly, his lips curled back from clenched teeth. His head fell forward, and his white bucket hat tilted, covering his face from view. "I, I'm so sorry," he choked. "I was just… just pulling a prank. I didn't even plan it- I came up with the idea during the first seance. I had no idea that it could- that I could-"

"TK…" Amy stood and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Izzy saw the glint of tears on his cheeks before he buried his face in her shoulder. "I'm alright, I promise. The night terror wasn't even your fault. No one can control what goes on in my brain."

Izzy grimaced. He would never know if her night terrors were caused by the ghosts or by TK's antics, but he was sure they had increased her susceptibility beforehand. However, Amy's forgiveness was hers alone to give, so he remained quiet.

TK sniffled, wet and loud, and Amy patted his back. "This isn't like you," she murmured. "Let me see you smile."

The blond eased back and brusquely wiped his eyes. "You're too damned soft. I took it too far, as always, and it had consequences for you. You _should_ be mad."

Amy tapped her chin, then shrugged. "I didn't say I'm not mad. But if you promise to explain everything to everyone, I'll forgive you."

TK held his hand out. "Done," he said, and they shook on it with a solemnity that had to be ritualistic. It ended with the exchange of wry smiles, and Amy sat back down and pulled her plate closer.

"I think I get the gist of what happened," she said. "But I won't deny you the chance to tell the story."

"There's not much to it," TK said, but he grinned regardless. Kari shook her head and poured herself more tea with a resigned air. "I saw how worked up Davis and Tai were over the seance, and that was tempting enough on its own."

"Naturally," Izzy murmured. TK's smile widened.

"But what really interested me was how the board was speaking. The word choices didn't suit Tai and Davis at all. It made me think… What if there really _is_ something to the seance? I found myself writing a story before I knew it, and then the board started challenging Izzy." He paused, and his fingers drummed over the table in a few rapid passes. "I mean, really… What did you expect me to do?"

"Were you wondering how far you'd have to push before I admitted that there could be some validity to occult beliefs?" Izzy asked.

"Don't look for logic," Kari sighed. "He was having fun. That's always the beginning and the end of it."

TK smiled sheepishly, but his typical animation was returning with each word. "Guilty as charged, I suppose. When Davis asked the spirit to prove that it was real, I switched off the lantern. The candles happened to blow out, and it was dark, so I loosened a battery. I wrote down what happened during the seance when we went home, and then I came here. I set off the first stink bombs in the basement and moved some things around. In the morning, I told Davis that my notes and pencils disappeared."

"But not the pens," Amy sighed. "I _thought_ that was strange. I should have known you couldn't part with your fountain pens, not even for the sake of a prank."

"Then you let yourself in that evening and hid in the foyer closet," Izzy continued. "You played the piano, and then you probably listened in while we talked everything over in the living room."

"Right. Then I came back the following night and stepped things up; more stink bombs, the mirror message… I didn't know about your night terrors until afterward."

"Hmm… I guess that _almost_ explains everything." Amy took a huge bite of her donut and stared at the ceiling as she chewed. "But… What about Tai's injuries? And you never touched the planchette, TK. We all agree that the things the board said were too pointed for comfort. And what about my dreams and night terrors?"

Kari dropped her face into her palm. "Tai and one of his soccer friends got in a play fight on Halloween. Most of you were spread around the party. I tried to get him to stop, but you know how he can be when he's drunk and excited… Doesn't anyone else remember that?"

Amy's jaw dropped so quickly that it popped. She grimaced, tilted her head, and rubbed the joint. "Are you _kidding_ me? I was so worried about him, and he got in a play fight and forgot about it?!"

TK fell back in his chair and laughed, high and bright. Kari sighed, folded her arms, and scowled at the tea pot. "Did he at least win?" TK asked.

Kari's eyes narrowed. "There is no winner when drunk boys pummel each other. They just do it until they get bored, start hugging, or fall over asleep."

TK leaned towards her, grinning with anticipation. "And which was it?" Kari clapped a hand to his forehead and pushed back. Izzy turned his attention to his tea while they engaged in something between scuffling and flirting.

"Children," Amy sighed at last. Kari and TK froze, and the girl resumed her former demure posture, cheeks ablaze. TK grinned rougishly and shrugged.

"Sorry. Anyway, when Matt told me about the plans for the second seance and what happened to Amy, I knew I had gone too far. I wrote a seance script to show the ghost apologizing and promising to leave, so that no one would be afraid anymore."

"But Matt wouldn't allow you to handle the board," Izzy said.

TK produced a long-suffering sigh. "My brother, the martyr. Always spoiling my fun." He rolled his eyes, but his affectionate smile removed any sting from his words. "I was worried the planchette would just sort of... ooze over the board. Or even worse, about things escalating somehow. But in the end..." His shoulders sagged into his chair's backrest. "In the end, I'm pretty damned convinced that we actually channeled something. What was handling the planchette like, Amy?"

She dropped her donut, picked up a knife, and ran her fingers nervously down its stem. "Every once in a while, there was a tugging sensation. But for the most part, my hands just... They moved without my consciously willing it. I'm sure Matt wasn't moving it on purpose. Our movements felt perfectly coordinated."

"Ooooh." TK leaned back, closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly. His hand inched towards the moleskin notebook by his elbow. "God, this is going to make a great story. I'll need more details later."

"Mm-hmm." Amy's flat tone matched the expression on Kari's face, eloquently transmitted with the upward curve of an eyebrow. "Personally, I keep trying to explain things away. You know, the dreams happened because I was thinking about the seance, the seance happened that way because of my subconscious, stuff like that. But..." The knife slipped between her fingers and fell onto the plate with a clatter. She turned to Izzy and sank her teeth into her lower lip.

A rueful smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "If you're expecting me to support the rational side of this argument, I'm afraid I must abstain."

TK gasped and leaned forward. He said nothing, but his massive smile and the sparkle in his eyes carried his meaning. Izzy sighed and lifted his gaze to the house's impressive crown molding. "Though I hate to admit it, recent occurrences have convinced me to favor the possibility of the supernatural."

TK inched forward and exhaled audibly. When Izzy returned his attention to his tea, the freshman slumped against the table. "Izzy," he complained, his tone scolding. "When the mighty fall, they don't land quietly."

Izzy pretended not to hear a pair of identical, half-swallowed chuckles from the ladies. He shrugged and reached for the teapot.

"No!" TK grabbed the vessel and pulled it towards himself. "I need _details_ , Sir Isaac. I was there on Halloween night, if you'll recall. You were _completely_ certain that the seance was hogwash. Something changed your mind, and I need to know what it was."

"Do you, now." Izzy reached for the pitcher of juice instead. TK's mouth worked silently, as if he couldn't find the means to properly express his frustration.

Kari slipped the teapot away, poured herself a fresh cup, then pushed it towards Izzy. "He really does need to know," she said. "Please tell him. He'll pester me about it for days otherwise."

Izzy glanced towards Amy for confirmation. She winced and nodded. "Very well," Izzy said, wishing he could ignore the dissolving sensation in his stomach. "If you truly must know... I believe I saw the ghost last night."

The effect was instantaneous. TK leaped from his chair as if it had stabbed his buttocks. Amy dropped her second donut, and it rolled until the table met the bitten portion, causing it to topple. Kari's eyelids flew upward and never quite fell back into their normal position.

TK uttered questions so rapidly that they were incomprehensible. Izzy lifted a hand for silence, then explained everything from the night before, including his pending appointment with Ryo. "After all," he concluded, somewhat desperately, "I can't completely rule out temporary mental instability or fatigue."

TK stared at him, then slowly removed his hat, holding it over his heart. He bowed his golden head. "The mighty truly have fallen."

Izzy tsked and drank his tea. He was aware of Amy's eyes hovering on him, aware of her hand moving towards him beneath the table.

"Maybe I should see if the library carries children's books," she said. "Elijah and Lydia would probably like to be read to sometimes."

Izzy hesitated, but Kari smiled and nodded. "I think they would. I know this has all been exciting, but remember... No matter how many other worlds may touch yours, or at least seem to, you need to stay focused on living in your own."

Amy's fingers landed on his, and Izzy wound them together. "She's correct," he said, squeezing gently. "Now that the mystery of the pilfering poltergeist has been solved, it's time to return to our everyday lives. Take, for example, the class you have in an hour."

"Shoot!" Amy turned to the time display on the oven, made a choking sound, and smushed the rest of the donut into her mouth. She washed it down with orange juice, said something garbled to TK and Kari, and hurried out of the room.

Izzy drained his tea, selected a bagel, and rose to find a baggie so he could eat it during class. "I trust you'll explain the origins of the hauntings to the others," he said.

TK flinched. "Yes," Kari replied, somewhat sharply. "He will."

"Yes, I will," he repeated. He released a long sigh. "And then I might become a ghost myself. I didn't know lipsticks were expensive."

Izzy snorted. "I wouldn't worry about Mimi in particular. I imagine there will be a queue of people waiting to, ah, _discuss_ this with you."

TK slumped over so much that his chin hit the table. Smiling, Izzy patted his shoulder as he passed. Just before he slipped out of the kitchen, TK called, "Izzy?"

"Hm?"

"Did you _really_ see the ghost?"

Izzy raised a single eyebrow. "I've said all that I intend to."

He nodded curtly and slipped into the foyer, intending to leave all things supernatural in the past. Then he remembered his meeting with Ryo and cursed. _I've allowed the possibility of beings and worlds beyond my perception. Such a shift in views can hardly blink out in an instant._

He sighed as he entered his bedroom. Amy was at her desk, packing her backpack. Without looking away from her task, she said, "I had another dream."

Izzy froze in the middle of closing the door. "A-another?" He shut it and hurried into the room. A sad smile crossed her face.

"Yes. I walked into a meadow, and two children were playing there. They asked me to join them, and I did. We ran around until the sun set, and then we said goodbye."

 _Goodbye..._ Izzy wrapped his arms around her waist. Although neither of them mentioned it, he knew the significance of the dream ending with that word.

Her head fell onto his shoulder. "I wonder what happened to them..."

"I doubt we'll ever know." He felt her stomach flatten against him as she sighed.

"I really must apologize to you again. I was so focused on what I labeled irrational behavior that I overlooked your concern for our household, and even for these children who died so long ago. I shouldn't have felt disappointed in you. It was the last thing you deserve." He looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

"Izzy..." Amy kissed his cheek, and he dared to look up. She smiled and tweaked his nose. "We were all worked up. I don't think any of us were at our best, unless you count TK being on top of his prank game."

He laughed, easing the biting ache in his chest. "Thank you. Since the day we met, you've been showing me new aspects of myself, as well as new views of the world that I had always overlooked."

She blinked and tipped her head. "Oh? I never meant... Well." A slow smile passed over her face. "If you want to try something new, how about a tarot reading?"

Laughing, he took hold of her hand and tugged her towards the bathroom. "Another time, perhaps. Let's shower and get to class."

"I dunno," she replied, grinning. "The bathroom mirror is haunted, remember?"

"Ah, yes." Izzy opened the door, revealing a perfectly normal mirror. "It would appear that our ghosts are unavailable." But despite his smile and joking tone, he was relieved. A pang assaulted his nerves as he wondered if he would always check the mirror for round faces from now on.

"Alright, alright." Amy shut the door behind her, and they prepared for the day.

And all the while, Izzy fervently hoped that it would be a normal day, free from anything _remotely_ supernatural, thank you very much.

 **Author's Note:** IT IS DONE. Holy crow, but this was a long update.

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed this silly tale of Izzy's opinion on the occult. And if you ever decide to hold a seance, please do be respectful of the dead! They're people, too! Just, you know. Dead people.

If you enjoyed it, I would really appreciate your feedback. Thanks for reading!


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